John Summit’s Experts Only Adds Marquee Skydeck Pre-Party and Pacha Afters
Experts Only is turning its September 19-20 Randall's Island weekend into a citywide takeover, with a Max Styler pre-party at Marquee Skydeck and official afters at Pacha New York.
John Summit isn’t settling for two days on Randall’s Island — he’s taking the whole weekend. Experts Only Festival returns September 19-20, 2026 at Randall’s Island Park in New York City, and the crew announced today that the festival is expanding into a citywide takeover with an official pre-party and two nights of afters.
The warm-up happens Friday, September 18 at Marquee Skydeck, the Tao Group spot perched more than 1,100 feet up at Edge at Hudson Yards. Max Styler gets the honors there, which makes sense — he’s already on festival duty that weekend with a b2b alongside Adam Ten on the island. Playing house music with a 360-degree view of the Manhattan skyline is a decent way to start a festival weekend, you have to admit.
Then, once the festival wraps each night, the official afters move to Pacha New York in East Williamsburg on both September 19 and 20. Lineups for those are still under wraps, though “expected to drop soon,” according to the announcement. Given that Pacha NY has already pulled Solomun, Michael Bibi, Black Coffee and ANOTR through its doors since opening this summer — and is about to host the U.S. debut of Ibiza’s Flower Power party, which we covered yesterday — expectations should be high.
As for the main event, the bill is stacked: Summit headlines both days, joined by GRiZ, Subtronics, Prospa, Taiki Nulight and more, plus b2bs including Innellea with Korolova and the now-inevitable “Subjohnics” pairing of Subtronics and Summit himself. It caps an eventful late summer for the Off The Grid boss, who cancelled four August festival dates ahead of his upcoming CTRL ESCAPE arena tour — so a hometown-scale blowout in New York feels like the exclamation point he’s been building toward all year.
Tickets for the festival are on sale now through the Experts Only site, with pre-party and afters details rolling out via the festival’s channels. Fair warning: between the skyline views on Friday and whoever ends up in that Pacha booth, the side events might sell out faster than the festival itself. If past Summit afters are any indication, those rooms will not stay secret — or available — for long.
