North Coast Music Festival continued its upward trajectory in 2025, with new stage upgrades and familiar amenities at SeatGeek Stadium near Chicago.
Labor Day Weekend and electronic music festivals go hand-in-hand in Chicago. The long-standing North Coast Music Festival located at SeatGeek Stadium in Bridgeview celebrated its 15th anniversary in 2025, and the overall experience was a satisfying festival that only gets better every year.
While the event started at Union Park near downtown in 2010, it has called the southwest suburbs home since 2021. North Coast uses the entirety of the SeatGeek Stadium campus to deliver a festival that is large enough to go on an adventure and small enough to catch all the sets you want and easily link with friends.
The way North Coast utilizes this venue is the festival’s biggest advantage. Parks in Chicago are pressed for size and close down early, but this suburban stadium has plenty of room and goes past the city’s 10 PM curfew each night. Split between two main stages, both the Stadium and the Vega have high quality production and plenty of room to either stand close to the front or relax further back in the crowd.
North Coast also features a few side stages that host main stage artists. The Shipyard turned into a 360 stage this year, featuring a unique elevated platform that fully rotated around the crowd. The familiar Fire Pit returned in 2025, which doubles as both a performance area and an art installation.
The air-conditioned Chill Dome is a nice change of pace from the outdoor stages and hosts notable headliners for special sets like a b2b from NGHTMRE and Liquid Stranger. Club Coast and the Silent Disco provide room to showcase local talent with collectives like What’s Good Chicago coordinating daily lineups.
All of these stages are located pretty close together, allowing for easy stage hopping and the ability to see multiple artists in the same time slot. We usually find ourselves in the concourse at the stadium or somewhere on the right side of the Vega, with both areas allowing for good views and enough room to either sit or stand.
Stadium headliners Chris Lake, Excision, and Zeds Dead delivered in their evening slots, playing sets that appealed to both festival veterans and a newer audience. Other highlights at the stadium included Tinlicker, Wax Motif, ATLiens, and Liquid Stranger. On the opposite side of the festival at the Vega, Deadmau5’s drum n bass set was the highlight of the day, if not the entire weekend. Of The Trees, KREAM, Seven Lions, SVDDEN DEATH, and Infekt also performed memorable sets here.
The Shipyard 360 was definitely an interesting setup – but with the rotating stage design, it was hard to tell what was the actual front of the crowd, which felt kind of awkward. Benny Benassi, Galantis, and Kaskade on Friday night brought some of the weekend’s best moments. The Fire Pit was the place to be for aggressive music, headlined by hard dance and riddim acts like Lil Texas and The Stooges.
North Coast is a festival that keeps us coming back year after year. It’s an EDM Chicago tradition; whether you started back in the days of Union Park or just found the festival at SeatGeek Stadium, NCMF provides vibes and internationally touring artists at a prime location near downtown Chicago. The stages continue to upgrade each year, with more LED screens and improved offerings in 2025.
Another successful North Coast is in the books, and the countdown for next year’s NCMF starts now. We’ll be back once again to celebrate Labor Day Weekend and check out the Midwest’s #1 EDM festival.
Author: @michael__premier
Photos: @austinhandlerphotography
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