Exclusive | John Summit just proved partying isnt dead at his NYC Experts Only Festival

New York is so back.A week after a slew of to-see-and-be-seen Fashion Week parties, the main event, the Experts Only Festival, landed in New York City and plopped onto Randall’s Island where 30,000 rabid dance music fans braved the rain to get down.The city’s one-and-only EDM festival is put on by John Summit, the 32-year-old CPA-turned-DJ who has completely overtaken the dance music scene.Summit’s label, Experts Only, which shares a name with his self-curated two-day fest, made sure he went all out too, stacking his 2026 lineup with big names Adam Ten, Max Styler and dubstep legend Subtronics.This weekend extravaganza was Summit’s second run at bringing EO to the island (he’s also coming back to the Big Apple as part of his CTRL Escape Tour on Nov.

28 at Brooklyn’s Barclays Center), and, after last year’s smashing success, expectations were sky high.Not just for the music, but for a smoother experience from delivering food and drinks to security, staging and everything in between.

And John, with his natural business savvy, he made plenty sure he didn’t skimp on the marketing side either.In the week leading up to the show, he sent fans on a scavenger hunt through Wall Street, where they were led to a fake newsstand selling a mock newspaper, “The Summit Street Journal.” And, on the eve of the fest, he threw a pre-party at the New York Stock Exchange, where a menagerie of finance bros dressed as themselves and some 200 lucky attendees fled work early for a rave my friend expertly described as “completely insane” that came with an open bar and sushi rolls.For the actual fest, we landed on Randall’s Island in the early afternoon, alongside a wild cross-section of the crowd: die-hard, glow-stick-waving ravers, those who looked like they were still stranded at Burning Man and a handful of performative house-music-lovers collecting content before jumping in a car back to the club.John blew up on Spotify in 2020, but before climbing the charts, t...