Berlin Moves to Bad Gastein - A Spa Resort that Pumps & Beats

GRAND LIGHTHOUSE™, Bad Gastein, Austria 22–25 January 2026

A Journal piece for design minds and culture wanderers Bad Gastein, Austria, slips into something unexpected each January. The mountains keep their classical poise, but the town starts to hum with urban voltage. GRAND LIGHTHOUSE™ returns, turning this Belle Époque cliffside beauty in the Austrian Alps into a temporary cultural playground. Electronic music, design-led happenings, thermal rituals and a hint of mischief drift through the snow. It feels as if someone spliced Berlin’s club scene with an architectural field trip, then dropped the result into Salzburg’s most dramatic valley.

This is winter, but not the one printed on ski brochures. The festival behaves like a curated takeover of Bad Gastein, Austria, threading its energy across landmark buildings. The historic Weissmayr, once Falco’s winter refuge, opens again after years of silence. Its patina stays intact, which suits the mood well. It becomes the new centre of gravity with cocktails, an art lounge, a subterranean pool party and a glamorous POPCHOP dinner pairing MOCHI x XO GRILL with Gut Oggau’s future-forward wines. Even Japan’s cult LEMON SOUR makes its European debut here, which feels perfectly in step with the town’s instinct for reinvention.

Bad Gastein’s architectural drama becomes the festival’s co-conspirator. The Grand Hôtel de l’Europe, all glorious curves and Wes Anderson spirit, hides an underground electronic floor in its basement. The abandoned power plant at the waterfall morphs into the Alpine Techno Bunker, a raw industrial ark that recalls the Croatian origins of the Lighthouse Festival. The Bellevue Alm, reached by Austria’s oldest A-series chairlift, becomes a three-level dance lodge where house and techno bounce off timber rafters while the Hohe Tauern peaks loom outside.

Then there is the Rock Baths: a 1970s thermal dream reimagined as the Grand Pool Party, complete with sauna rituals, bathrobe catwalks and a pool that trembles under the sound system. Only in Bad Gastein, Austria, could wellness turn theatrical with a creative wink.

The line-up is sharp, international and deeply rooted in the underground. SONJA MOONEAR, MARRØN, ND BAUMECKER and DJ SWEET6TEEN headline a selection drawn from Vienna, Berlin, Munich and beyond. House, techno, minimal, late-night experiments and early-morning soft clubbing give the festival its rhythmic backbone.

What sets GRAND LIGHTHOUSE™ apart is its intelligent relationship with place. This is not a festival simply set in the Alps. It is a cultural edit of Bad Gastein, Austria, a reminder that architecture, landscape and sound can coexist when handled with clarity and a little edge. The result attracts a new breed of winter culture nomads, design-conscious travellers and electronic music seekers who want something more considered than the typical après-ski story.

Grand Lighthouse Bad Gastein, Austria | Boutique Winter Electronic Music Festival in the Alps

Where to stay?

For those planning their escape to GRAND LIGHTHOUSE™, our favourites sit just above the valley with the kind of quiet charisma that suits Bad Gastein’s creative pulse. Haus Hirt offers a modernist wink wrapped in cosy Alpine clarity, a place where vintage details, terrace views and a cultured crowd set the tone. Miramonte, its sister perch nearby, leans into retro contours and relaxed salon energy, all terraces, cocktails and mountain lines that glow at dusk. Both hotels tap into Bad Gastein’s design-forward spirit and make the perfect base for festival days, late nights and slow Alpine mornings.