I Hate Models Picked Belgrade for Disco Inferno's Balkan Debut. That's Not a Budget Booking, It's a Verdict.

I Hate Models does not take his show on the road casually. Disco Inferno, the French producer's high-intensity live concept, has played some of the biggest stages in techno over the past two years, and on October 2 it lands for the first time in Southeast Europe, on the main stage of I Hate Models' Belgrade date at REACT Festival.

What makes Disco Inferno different from a regular set?

It is built as a dedicated live show rather than a DJ booking: a specific production I Hate Models (Guillaume Labadie, performing masked since he started in 2015) has been touring as its own event concept, not a slot inside somebody else's night. Festivals that book it are booking the full production, not just the name. That distinction is why its arrival at Port of Belgrade matters more than another headliner announcement would.

Why does the Belgrade booking matter?

For years, Belgrade's techno scene has been framed from the outside as the cheap, loose alternative to Berlin, somewhere promoters route acts for a weekend, not somewhere the circuit's own curators show up to build a programme. REACT complicates that. The festival, run by Belgrade's Music Reactions community as an anniversary event, has brought in two collectives that curate for their own scenes at home, Paris' RAW and Germany's BCCO, and handed them stage takeovers rather than a guest slot apiece. Add the first Southeast European Disco Inferno date on top, and the booking reads less like Belgrade catching up to Western Europe's circuit and more like that circuit choosing to show up on its own terms.

The festival, run by Belgrade's Music Reactions community as an anniversary event, handed full stage takeovers to two of Western Europe's own curating collectives rather than booking them as guests.

Who else is playing?

Across the two nights and two stages, REACT runs 26 artists in total, with Kobosil, Aerea, Kloud, Øtta, Triptykh and Ueberrest alongside the RAW and BCCO rosters and I Hate Models. Tickets for the two-day pass started at roughly 53 euros, with the early tiers now sold out according to the festival's own site, a sign the regional appetite for this kind of booking is real, not assumed.