What is Decadence Arizona?
Decadence Arizona is a two-night electronic music festival that occupies the grounds of Phoenix Raceway in Avondale on December 30 and 31, 6 p.m. to 3 a.m. each night, and counts down the new year under a headliner at midnight on the 31st. It is produced by Relentless Beats, the Valley’s electronic promoter, with Global Dance of Denver, and it has run every New Year’s since December 2015, when it opened at Rawhide in Chandler as the state’s first two-day New Year’s Eve festival. The 2026 edition, themed Sands of Eternity, is the twelfth: December 30–31, 2026, with Disclosure in the ball-drop slot and Chris Lake, Slander, Zomboy, ISOxo, Wooli, Polo & Pan and Patrick Topping among about thirty acts on three stages.
It is strictly 18 and over, sold only as two-day passes (GA was $339.99 in October 2026 and will be more by December), and it is the single biggest New Year’s Eve crowd in Arizona, drawn from across the Southwest. The raceway, a NASCAR track at the base of the Estrella Mountains, gives it paved ground, big parking lots and room for a main stage the size of a grandstand; the trade is distance. From Old Town Scottsdale it is 45 minutes west on an empty freeway and the drive home at 3 a.m. on New Year’s morning is the part most first-timers get wrong.
For a Scottsdale visitor it answers a specific question. Scottsdale does not shoot fireworks on New Year’s Eve and its celebrations are indoors; see our holiday season guide. If you want the countdown to happen in a crowd of thousands under lasers, this is where the Valley does it.
How to do it
Buy early, buy two-day. Passes went on sale July 31, 2026 at $299.99 for GA, $399.99 for GA+, $599.98 for VIP and $1,249.99 for Platinum, and by early October GA was $339.99, VIP $649.99 and Platinum $1,259.78; each tier sells through and the next costs more. There are no single-night tickets. GA+ buys express entry and premium restrooms, which on a racetrack lot in the cold is a real upgrade; VIP adds viewing areas and lounges; Platinum, 21 and over, is the artist lounge, a catered dinner, open bar, a swag bag and a champagne toast at midnight. Tables are 21 and over and sell separately.
Getting there. Loop 101 south to Interstate 10 west, past downtown Phoenix and out to Avondale Boulevard, then south to the track; 45 minutes from Old Town with nothing on the road, an hour-plus between 6 and 9 p.m. on the 31st. Parking opens at 4 p.m.: free at Entry G, a paid premium lot at Entry F, rideshare drop and pickup at Entry E. No overnight parking; cars left behind are towed. The festival sells a round-trip shuttle from Sunbar in Tempe as an add-on, which turns the night into a bus ride each way and is the best answer for anyone drinking. The other answer is a hotel: the Gila River resorts at Wild Horse Pass are 25 minutes from the track on the Loop 202, and Avondale and Goodyear have the usual chain hotels along the I-10.
The two nights. The 30th is, by habit, the heavier music night, with the house and techno stages at full strength and shorter lines; the 31st is the party, with the countdown set, a slower entry and a slower exit. Doors at 6; the main stage fills by 9. Set times come out the week of the show.
What to wear and bring. It is an outdoor festival on asphalt in late December, 60s at sunset and 40s by the countdown; a layer you can tie around your waist, closed shoes and ear protection. Water refill stations are on the grounds. Expect a clear-bag policy and a search at the gate.
What to skip. Driving yourself on the 31st if anyone in the car is drinking, and the first 30 minutes after 3 a.m. at the rideshare pen; let the crowd thin.
From Rawhide to the racetrack
Relentless Beats, founded in 2006 by Thomas Turner, had thrown New Year’s Eve club shows for years before it decided it wanted a festival. With Global Dance, the Denver promoter behind the original Decadence at the Colorado Convention Center, it announced Decadence NYE Arizona for December 30–31, 2015 at Rawhide Western Town and Event Center in Chandler: Knife Party, ODESZA and Pretty Lights, 6 p.m. to 3 a.m., the first two-day New Year’s Eve event in the state. (Early releases counted differently, calling 2015 the “second annual” and 2017 the fourth; the festival’s own numbering now runs from 2015, with 2021 the seventh, 2025 the eleventh and 2026 the twelfth.) Rawhide’s dirt streets and lawns held it through 2021. By the 2021 edition it was three stages with Marshmello, Kaskade, Fisher, DJ Snake, Alesso, Seven Lions and Shaquille O’Neal’s Diesel, two-day GA at $199, and a shuttle from ASU’s Lot 59 in Tempe.
In 2022 it moved across the Valley to Phoenix Raceway, whose paved grounds and permanent infrastructure suited a bigger build. The 10th anniversary in 2024 brought what Phoenix New Times called its largest production yet, and the 2025 edition, The Portal of Illusions, added a third stage, the Conservatory, for house and techno alongside the Grand Palace main stage and the Royal Ballroom, with Zedd and Subtronics on the 30th and GRiZ running the countdown on the 31st. The 2026 theme, Sands of Eternity, continues the pattern of a new world built each year on the same lot.
New Year’s Eve in the Valley
Decadence is one of two things that happen on December 31 in the Valley at scale: this festival and the bar crawl. Scottsdale is the bar crawl’s capital; see Old Town nightlife for the clubs that sell tables and open-bar wristbands that night. Relentless Beats’ own calendar bookends the festival with HEX at Rawhide on Halloween and Phoenix Lights in the spring, in the years that one runs.
Why it belongs on a Scottsdale calendar
Because Scottsdale does not do this. The city has no public New Year’s fireworks, its resorts sell a dinner and a band, and its clubs sell a bottle; a visitor who wants a countdown in a crowd of thousands with a headliner has to leave town, and Avondale is where the Valley has put it. The night is a commitment: a 45-minute drive or a shuttle, two nights of tickets, 3 a.m. finishes, December cold on asphalt. Go once with the shuttle and a hotel on the west side, and the next year you will know whether it is your New Year’s. If it is, you will also know the raceway, which is the point of our NASCAR at Phoenix Raceway guide.