MAYDAY

MAYDAY is a night of techno and trance indoors at the Westfalenhallen in Dortmund. Four floors share the same building. It opens at 19:00 and closes at 07:00 the next morning, twelve hours straight. The minimum age is 16, with ID. I-Motion organises it, a full subsidiary of DEAG Deutsche Entertainment AG. The office is at Am Hohen Stein 8, 56218 Mülheim-Kärlich. The phone they publish is +49 261 921584-0 and the mail is info@i-motion.ag. On their sheet they put 20,000 visitors: that figure is theirs, not one door's turnstile. There is no campsite in the hall. Anyone who sleeps, sleeps in Dortmund. The hall address is Strobelallee 45, 44139 Dortmund. Lost property opens on Tuesdays from 08:00 to 12:00, phone +49 231 1204-1890, mail fundbuero@westfalenhallen.de. Parking for that night was published at 10 euros. Anyone with a blue badge asks for a space by the door: the hall says those spaces, on A3 and A4, run out, so it pays to arrive early. The house rule asks that food and drink stay outside, and it allows a bag up to A4, 21 by 29.7 centimetres. A large backpack, an umbrella and a suitcase can stop at the check. The wheelchair entrance is to the right of the main door.

The night already lived is 30 April 2026, a Thursday, under the motto ICONIC. The papers for that sale set the same hours, 19:00 to 07:00, and said those twelve hours were new. They spoke of more than 30 names on four floors. The regular eTicket was 79 euros, fees included. Next Generation, for ages 16 to 19, was 59. Comfort was 169. A group of five paid 345, ten euros less a person. The ticket partner they cite is myticket. It was also sold on the Westfalenhallen online box office. Dortmund-App called that night the 39th. Kulturinfo Ruhr called it the 32nd. Both numbers are in print. This text does not pick one.

The four floors in that announcement had different jobs. Arena went to hard techno. Empire mixed bounce, raw techno and trance. Factory gathered the harder side. Techno Legends, with Acid Wars, looked back at the early sound. The current site says Speedy J was already on the first night, in 1991, and was returning to that legends floor. The whole bill is not required to see the map: one night, four floors, from dusk to morning. The anthem of that sale was signed by Friends of Mayday, and the paper said it was their tenth year on that job, with Peter Pahn.

The U45 urban train leaves Dortmund central station and stops at Westfalenhallen. The 2026 announcement also offered a board for sharing a car and HardTours buses with seats toward the hall. The ticket for that sale included VRR public transport in second class, valid until 1 May at 12:00. From midnight to 08:00, special U45 trains ran between the hall and the central station, with a stop at Kampstraße. Inside, payment is cashless: a wristband is topped up in the corridors by card or by cash. Coming back in, after leaving, cost 5 euros on that wristband. A locker on its own was 8 or 12 euros by size. Comfort, in the same hall, included a locker, a separate entrance and a zone beside the booths in Arena and Empire. At the door a local paper put 89 euros, and 179 for Comfort. The group of five sold out in one local paper, while the price of 345 stayed in print on other announcements.

It started in December 1991, in a Berlin hall, with about 5,000 people, according to the text the site itself uses now. A Voxtrix text places the Westfalenhallen as the fixed hall since 1993. The same page printed an expected crowd of 15,000 to 20,000 for that April, as an estimate, not a counted gate. From that small night came the long indoor rave. I-Motion runs it today, from Mülheim-Kärlich, inside the DEAG group. The same name prints a date in Poland. This text follows the Dortmund night. The figure of 20,000 is the one the producer puts on its sheet, next to the hall and the year 1991.

The homepage sells another April night, with the same motto and the same span from 19:00 to 07:00. That date is not counted here. What already has an hour, a floor and a price is 30 April 2026: four floors, twelve hours, age 16 with ID, the metro at the door and a bed in the city when the code stops opening at seven in the morning.