Who actually wins this poll?
Three names: David Guetta, Martin Garrix and Armin van Buuren, the only artists to have topped DJ Mag's Top 100 DJs five times apiece. Between Guetta and Garrix alone, that's 9 of the last 10 first-place finishes. Voting for the 2026 edition, the poll's 33rd year, opened July 8 and stays open until September 16, with no nomination round and no eligibility filter: anyone online can submit five names, and mainstream-EDM fanbases have consistently outvoted every other constituency.
Why do house and techno keep losing?
It isn't a secret; even DJ Mag has effectively conceded the point. The magazine now runs a second, Beatport-partnered '100' chart specifically to give techno and house artists like Charlotte de Witte and Carl Cox a ranking that isn't drowned out by big-room and progressive-house fan armies mobilized through management teams and social campaigns. Veteran trance DJ Paul van Dyk has called the main poll a straightforward popularity contest and urged artists not to bother entering.
Is DJ Mag fixing its own problem?
Not exactly, it's running two polls in parallel rather than fixing the one that matters for bookings. The Top 100 still functions as a hiring signal for festival buyers and a bargaining chip in fee negotiations, so a poll structurally weighted toward whoever has the biggest mailing list keeps shaping which artists get the biggest stages, regardless of what's actually happening on dancefloors.
Splitting off a separate chart for techno and house is DJ Mag quietly admitting its flagship poll stopped measuring the scene a long time ago.
