Who we are

ADE is organised by the Amsterdam Dance Event Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to nurturing and elevating electronic music, its culture and its industry worldwide. The organization devotes itself to stimulating development, innovation and talent, gathering the global industry and laying a foundation for future generations.

The ADE Foundation is a small and agile organization, consisting of 6 staff members and over 70 freelancers. We highly value safety and inclusion in our workplace as well in all our collaborations and programs, which are based on a code of conduct.


Management Team

Since a renewed management structure was introduced in 2024, the director has been working strategically with a management team (MT) of four staff members that covers both the content and operational areas of the organization.

The MT consists of the Head of Operations, Head of Marketing & Communications, Head of Program and the Head of Partnerships.

The management team, together with the director, forms the core of the organization that works on ADE throughout the entire year. During the peak period surrounding the conference and festival, this team is expanded with approximately 70 freelancers who support execution across various departments such as operations, customer service, ticketing, production, marketing, partnerships and programming.

Raad van Toezicht (RvT)

The organization is structured according to the Supervisory Board model, which means that the management team is supervised and advised by an independent Supervisory Board (RvT). The RvT consists of five members: Willemijn Maas, Jeroen van Ingen, Olga Heijns, Elvind Usidame and Sam Vergauwen. These five members gather together multiple times a year. The RvT is responsible for overseeing the overall direction of the organisation and plays a non-executive role and acts as an independent body that monitors the performance of the director and the organisation as a whole. In addition to its supervisory function, they also provides strategic advice and supports the organisation in maintaining its cultural, financial, and organisational integrity.

The heart of the program is the ADE Conference, which is roughly to be divided in ADE Pro (for the professionals in dance culture) and ADE Lab (for the upcoming artist and young professionals). Within the conference program there are various topics and sub conferences covering a wide array of topics such as sustainability, technological developments, programs for start-ups, mentoring programs for young talents and programs devoted to safety or self expression.

The Conference is curated internally by the ADE team, which consists of project managers and programmers with diverse areas of expertise.

While the festivals during ADE are well known and form a major part of the event, ADE is not responsible for curating the festival program. The ADE team works closely with official ADE venues and promoters. Part of our role is to ensure that participating venues contribute meaningfully to the program and add value to the sector as a whole, while the venues and promoters focus on the programming of the ADE Festival events.

Festival Fund & Festival committee

To support upcoming artists and professionals, we work with an independent festival committee. Since 2022, ADE has supported small-scale and experimental initiatives through its own Festival Fund, with the aim of promoting diversity and supporting emerging organisers. The ADE Festival Fund is an independent committee set up by the ADE Foundation to assess the applications for the ADE Fee. This committee consists of experts within different music industry disciplines who will be selected and appointed by the ADE Foundation.

In 2025, on the advice of an independent festival committee, more than 40 initiatives were supported. Although the contributions per application are relatively modest, they often make the difference in realising new or underrepresented events. Following a careful selection process, the festival committee was renewed in 2025 and now consists of a diverse group of independent professionals from the nightlife sector, who are responsible for allocating the grants.

Electronic dance music has a broader cultural impact and relevant crossovers with other artistic disciplines. Through the Arts & Culture program, ADE explicitly positions electronic music within a broader artistic and societal context.

Arts & Culture Curators

2025 marked the first year of the implementation of the four-year subsidy period, supported by the Fonds Podiumkunsten and the Amsterdams Fonds voor de Kunst. Organizationally, this led, among other things, to the further development of the ADE team. In addition to the project manager and general programmer, five specialized programmers/curators were appointed after an external recruitment process, responsible for driving and curating the Arts & Culture program.

They connect and expand electronic music culture through four key pillars: Visual Arts, Performing Arts, Immersive Arts, and Club Culture. This effort has resulted in significant growth in the number of program components as well as a more diverse and content-rich offering. By programming more proactively, creators and audience groups are involved who, under the previous more reactive programming model, were not a structural part of ADE.

Within the Friends program, local communities and initiatives are brought together under the umbrella of ADE. The scope of the Friends program is highly diverse, ranging from pop-up stores and cultural initiatives to hospitality venues, social organizations, and sports clubs that develop programming for their own communities.

Internally, this is coordinated to ensure alignment and cohesion across all participating initiatives under the ADE umbrella. Meaning that the ADE Foundation does not produce these program components itself, but acts as an overarching platform.