Ultra Australia's 2026 lineup reads like a Spotify Wrapped from a decade ago. The Chainsmokers. DJ Snake. Zedd. If you looked at the Instagram post, you could convince yourself "Closer" had just dropped and everyone was still using Snapchat. The "2026 is 2016" trend has been floating around TikTok for months, mostly as a joke. Standing in a crowd of 20,000 people at Flemington, it stopped feeling like a joke.

The night kicked off with Darren Styles, which is a tough ask. Hardstyle at 5 pm is already a strange choice, but the sound made it even worse. His set came through so faint compared to everyone else that night that it felt like the speakers had not been properly set up yet. The energy never really had a chance to land.

Luckily, things picked up from there. MaRLo’s set was euphoric. Nico Moreno’s set on the Renaissance stage had genuine energy, containing that raw moment that reminds you how alive electronic music can make you feel. And then there was Zedd, who was easily the highlight of the night. His production was sharp and deliberate, his setlist was built in a way that actually took you somewhere, and the crowd felt every bit of it. People who had been half-distracted all evening were suddenly locked in. It was the set everything else was measured against and, in hindsight, the one the night should have ended on.

DJ Snake went on after Zedd, and whatever momentum had been curated by Zedd did not survive the handover. Not only did DJ Snake show up late, but he also had to restart his set due to sound issues. The energy Zedd had spent an entire set constructing was gone within minutes, replaced with the awkward silence of a confused crowd. His delay also pushed the Chainsmokers back, and with the 11 pm non-negotiable curfew, their set got cut mid-song. Not a planned ending. Just a song stopping before it was finished, fireworks going off in silence, and a crowd standing there looking at each other trying to figure out if that was it. It was.

Off the stage, the vibe had its own issues. PLUR (peace, love, unity and respect), the foundational ethos of rave culture, was not the operating principle of the crowd. There was pushing and elbowing throughout the night, which made it feel less like a community of people who love this music and more like everyone was trying to get to the front for a better picture for their Instagram story. This is not necessarily a big deal, but at a festival that markets itself on the culture of electronic music, it is hard to ignore. 

The nostalgia is not accidental. Ultra knows its audience is tired, and 2016 feels, in memory at least, like a much simpler time. The festival is selling an escape, and the crowd, packed into Flemington on a rainy April night, was clearly willing to take it. But the production hiccups, the scheduling that wasted its own best moment and a lineup that looked like it had been taken straight from a 2016 festival poster made the TikTok joke feel less like an observation and more like a diagnosis. We did not just revisit 2016 on Saturday night. In reality, we never left.