Dance music's biggest industry week just had a security problem with a very specific shape: spray first, grab the chain, vanish into the crowd.
At least four venues during [[festival:amsterdam-dance-event|Amsterdam Dance Event]]'s 30th-anniversary edition (October 21 to 25) reported tear gas or pepper spray going off mid-set, and in every single case, the trigger was an alleged jewelry theft. This wasn't one bad night. It was a pattern that held across five days and four rooms.
What actually happened at Gashouder?
The clearest account comes from Saturday night at Gashouder, during Franky Rizardo's FLOW set. Around 19:45, a scuffle broke out roughly 10 meters from the stage. Gas went off in the chaos, 15 people needed first aid, three were sent for further medical checks, and nobody was hospitalized. The suspect, allegedly caught trying to lift a necklace, fled while the room scrambled. No one has been arrested.
Gashouder's own response says everything about how normalized this has become for Dutch venues running big-capacity nights: staff cut the music for five minutes, leaned on the hall's ventilation to clear the air within 15 minutes, and searched everyone on the way out. Nobody was caught. A Gashouder spokesperson put it almost matter-of-factly: "We have a good air ventilation system, so within a quarter hour there is completely clean air in the hall." That's a line a venue only has rehearsed if it's dealt with this before.
How many venues were actually hit?
At least four. The Gashouder incident was, per NL Times, the fourth spray-linked attack of the festival, after two Friday night incidents at Audio Obscura's party at RAW Factory and elrow's event at Kromhouthal. Then came SugarFactory, during the Adriatique and Awakenings all-nighter: a 38-year-old Canadian attendee said a thief pulled his gold chain off his neck and sprayed something into his face from close range. "He pulled out something that looked like pepper spray or tear gas and sprayed it directly into my face," he told reporters.
A police spokesperson confirmed dozens of jewelry-theft reports filed across the festival's run, while declining to put a number on the spray incidents specifically: "It is difficult to say the exact number at the moment, because the situation may still change."
"He pulled out something that looked like pepper spray or tear gas and sprayed it directly into my face."
Why does this keep happening at ADE specifically?
Spray-and-grab isn't new to Amsterdam's club scene, and it isn't new to ADE: the tactic exploits exactly the conditions a packed room creates. Nobody can see who did what, the chemical irritant clears attention away from the thief's hands, and a crowd that size swallows a fleeing suspect in seconds. What's notable in 2026 is the clustering: four confirmed incidents inside a single five-day week, hitting both a legacy room like Gashouder and newer-circuit parties like Adriatique's Awakenings night. That's not a one-off bad actor, it reads like a pattern a crew is running across the festival's biggest nights.
None of the four venues have announced arrests. Police have not confirmed exact theft counts or linked the incidents to a single group. That gap, a festival this size generating four spray attacks and zero named suspects, is itself the story for anyone booking or working ADE's bigger rooms next year.
