New EDM Friday May 15 brings new music from Martin Garrix, Ed Sheeran, David Guetta, Alesso, and more.

John Summit Teases CTRL ESCAPE Arena Tour following the success of his second studio album

John Summit has teased a possible CTRL ESCAPE arena tour, adding another major live angle to an album cycle that has already been tied closely to his own career story. The tease comes after the release of CTRL ESCAPE, his second studio album, which was released on April 15 and played directly into his former life as an accountant through Tax Day timing, office-style promo, and pop-up events connected to the album’s concept. In the weeks around release, John Summit also kept the rollout moving through special live moments, including a Spotify and LinkedIn office pop-up in New York and an open-to-close Red Rocks set tied to CTRL ESCAPE. The arena idea also has history behind it, since John Summit previously brought the Comfort In Chaos era to Madison Square Garden and three Kia Forum shows, where the orchestral live version of Where You Are showed how his music could expand in a larger concert setting.

What John Summit Has Teased About The CTRL ESCAPE Arena Tour

John Summit has teased the CTRL ESCAPE arena tour one month after the album came out, giving fans the first real sign of how the project could move into an arena setting. In the post, John Summit said he had been working on how to bring the album to life “in an arena setting” and said a tour announcement was coming soon. The wording matters because it links the tease directly to the album, not just to another round of tour dates. It also gives fans a clearer idea of what to expect from the next chapter, with CTRL ESCAPE being treated as a full live concept.

The visual side of the tease added more context, with John Summit sharing a stage rendering that showed a packed arena and a larger production layout. EDM.com also reported the rendering as part of the CTRL ESCAPE arena tour tease, which made the post feel closer to an early preview than a casual comment online. That detail fits the way John Summit has handled the album so far, where the music, artwork, office references, and release events have all stayed tied to the same concept. For now, the confirmed point is simple: John Summit is preparing to bring CTRL ESCAPE into an arena setting, with full tour details still expected from official channels.

Inside John Summit’s CTRL ESCAPE Rollout

John Summit treated CTRL ESCAPE like a campaign tied to his own career story, with the album’s April 15 release date giving the rollout its clearest reference point. April 15 is U.S. Tax Day, which made the timing connect directly to his former CPA background and the album’s office-life concept. Before release week, John Summit had already introduced the album through a surprise Los Angeles pop-up, where the CTRL ESCAPE title and release date started circulating publicly. He later posted office-themed promo around the album, writing that it was his “first time in the office” since his accountant days, while confirming CTRL ESCAPE as his new album out April 15. The campaign kept the accounting reference specific without over-explaining it: the title uses keyboard language, the release date pointed to tax season, and the visuals placed John Summit back inside the kind of corporate setting he left before becoming a full-time artist.

The rollout also gave fans several physical touchpoints before the album came out. On April 2, Spotify and LinkedIn hosted an invite-only New York office party for John Summit’s top Spotify listeners, with the event celebrating CTRL ESCAPE ahead of its release through Experts Only and Darkroom Records.

 

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Coverage from the pop-up also pointed to new music being previewed, including CHICA 305, which gave the event a stronger album connection than a standard branded appearance. Less than a week later, John Summit brought CTRL ESCAPE to Red Rocks Amphitheatre for a special open-to-close album pop-up on April 8, giving fans a three-hour set tied directly to the project before its release. Those events gave the rollout two sides at once: the office concept made the album’s backstory visible, while Red Rocks put the project in front of a live crowd before the wider arena conversation started.

 

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rt=”0″ data-end=”61″>John Summit’s Arena History Started With Comfort In Chaos

John Summit had already tested the album-to-arena format during the Comfort In Chaos era, starting with his June 29, 2024 headline show at Madison Square Garden. The New York show used a 360-degree stage, lasers, and a larger visual setup, but the bigger point was how the night was structured around John Summit’s catalog and debut album. Pollstar reported that the show sold out with 15,636 fans and grossed $1.5 million, with ticket prices ranging from $29 to $299. The set ran as a long-form solo show, moving through different parts of John Summit’s career before ending with a two-hour Comfort In Chaos section, which made the album feel like the center of the night instead of a few new tracks placed inside a festival-style set. John Summit later uploaded the Madison Square Garden set to SoundCloud, writing that his team had put significant work into bringing the Comfort In Chaos vision to life, which adds more context to why the current CTRL ESCAPE arena tour tease feels like a continuation of a format he has already tried at scale.

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comfort in chaos @ madison square garden

♬ original sound – john summit

The Los Angeles run pushed that idea further, with John Summit playing three sold-out nights at the Kia Forum on November 14, 15, and 16, 2024. The 17,500-capacity venue gave Comfort In Chaos a bigger West Coast headline moment, with the sound system selected to carry the full range of John Summit’s tracks while still giving the crowd the force expected from a dance show. The Forum dates also added one of the clearest examples of how John Summit can expand his music for a larger concert setting, with a live orchestra joining him for the opening of Where You Are. He had previewed the orchestra element before the first Forum show, and the performance later became Where You Are (Orchestral Version) – Live At The Forum, released with HAYLA and Maddix in November 2024. That moment matters for the CTRL ESCAPE arena tour angle because it shows that John Summit’s arena plans are not limited to bigger screens and larger rooms. The Comfort In Chaos run already showed him using headline arenas for longer set structure, live arrangement changes, guest vocal moments, and album-focused production.

@kickzster John Summit opening up The Forum with a Full Orchestra 😍 TOP MF TIER ❤️‍🔥❤️‍🔥❤️‍🔥 #johnsummitforum #johnsummitkiaforum #johnsummitkiaforumla #johnsummitla #johnsummitforumla #kiaforum #kiaforumla #johnsummitlosangeles #johnsummittour #johnsummitlive #johnsummitshow #johnsummitconcert #johnsummitmightrave #johnsummitmusic #johnsummitcomfortinchaos ♬ original sound – JC | Festivals | Creator

What A CTRL ESCAPE Arena Tour Could Mean For John Summit

A CTRL ESCAPE arena tour would put John Summit’s second studio album into the same headline format that helped Comfort In Chaos grow beyond a standard DJ set. The bigger question is how far that format could go this time, especially if the tour expands beyond the U.S. and takes the CTRL ESCAPE concept into international arenas. With the album already tied to office visuals, Tax Day timing, pop-ups, and the Red Rocks album set, John Summit has enough material to turn the show into something more structured than a regular club or festival appearance. The Comfort In Chaos era also gives fans a reason to look for more than screens and lasers, since the Kia Forum run included the orchestral Where You Are moment with HAYLA. That opens the door for similar live elements, reworked intros, guest vocals, or album-specific arrangements if John Summit chooses to scale the concept further. Full tour details are still to come, but the tease has already made the next step around CTRL ESCAPE one of the most closely watched parts of his current album cycle.

Martin Garrix and Ed Sheeran’s Repeat It finally gets its official release after first being previewed at Ultra Music Festival Miami in 2015

Martin Garrix and Ed Sheeran are finally releasing Repeat It on Friday, May 15, in honor of Martin’s 30th birthday, bringing one of EDM’s longest-running unreleased IDs into an official release after more than a decade. The track first began in 2014, before Martin Garrix previewed it at Ultra Music Festival Miami in 2015, where fans came to know it as Rewind Repeat It. For years, the collaboration stayed caught between its festival-history status and the label complications connected to the period before Martin Garrix became independent. Now, after fan uploads, release petitions, renewed 2026 teasers, and an official confirmation from Martin Garrix, Repeat It is finally leaving its unreleased-ID status behind as the collaboration prepares for its official release on Friday, May 15.

 

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How Martin Garrix and Ed Sheeran’s Repeat It All Started in 2014

Martin Garrix and Ed Sheeran were first linked to Repeat It in 2014, long before the track became known through live rips, fan uploads, and years of release speculation. The earliest public mention came during Miami Music Week, when Martin Garrix spoke about working with Ed Sheeran while he was still in the Spinnin’ Records period of his career. At that stage, the song was not being presented as a finished single. Reports around the Miami press event said the track still needed more work and would also need approval from Ed Sheeran’s label, which now reads like the first public sign of the release complications that followed it for years. It also places the collaboration in a very specific 2014 context: Martin Garrix was still close to the global breakout of Animals, while Ed Sheeran was entering the x era, before dance collaborations had become a regular part of pop release cycles.

The creative history behind Repeat It also points back to Los Angeles, where Martin Garrix later said he and Ed Sheeran met and began exchanging ideas. Ed Sheeran sent over a voice note with a melody, giving Martin Garrix a vocal idea to work around from the start. That detail matters because the track was not simply a festival instrumental with a pop vocal added later. It began through an exchange between a producer closely associated with big-room festival records and a songwriter whose work was centered on melody, phrasing, and direct lyric writing. Ed Sheeran later said he had finished his first EDM song with Martin Garrix, while Martin Garrix explained that people found the pairing strange at the time because their styles did not naturally align. That early contrast gave Repeat It a different place in both artists’ histories before fans heard it under its original ID name, Rewind Repeat It, at Ultra Music Festival Miami in 2015.

Why Rewind Repeat It Got Stuck Between Label Timing and Old Contract Issues

The reason Rewind Repeat It stayed unreleased was not simply that Martin Garrix and Ed Sheeran moved on from the song. The problem started much earlier, when the track still needed approval from Ed Sheeran’s label before it could come out. By 2017, Martin Garrix had explained that the collaboration had been planned as an official single, but the release became difficult because the labels could not agree on timing. Part of that issue came from Ed Sheeran’s own release schedule, with reports saying his side wanted to prioritize other Ed Sheeran songs first. For a track that was already being played in festival sets, that delay mattered because unreleased IDs rely heavily on timing. Once the original window passed, Rewind Repeat It was no longer just waiting for a date. It was caught between two artist calendars, two label systems, and a release plan that had already lost its first chance.

The situation became even harder because the song belonged to an earlier part of Martin Garrix’s career. Rewind Repeat It was made while Martin Garrix was still tied to the Spinnin’ Records era, before he became independent and launched the next phase of his career through his own label structure. By 2018, Martin Garrix was openly saying that he did not think the song would ever be released, with the issue being linked to old rights and contract complications from that period. That is why the long wait around Repeat It became different from a normal unreleased ID story. Fans kept asking for it because they had already heard the song, but the release was stuck behind business details that could not be solved by demand alone. The track stayed alive through live recordings, fan uploads, and petitions, but its official release needed the rights, label timing, and artist-side approvals to finally line up.

How Repeat It Finally Returned in 2026

The 2026 return of Repeat It did not begin with a standard single announcement. It started with Martin Garrix and Ed Sheeran being seen together again in New York City, where footage of them filming and walking backwards immediately pulled the old Rewind Repeat It connection back into focus. That detail mattered because it was not a random sighting between two artists who once worked together. The backwards movement tied directly to the song’s original title, and after years of old live rips carrying the track online, the New York clips gave fans the first real sign that the collaboration was being treated as an active release again.

The rollout became more direct after that. Martin Garrix previewed a new version during an Instagram Live in April, while reports said the track had been reworked from the 2015 Ultra Music Festival Miami version and shortened from Rewind, Repeat It to Repeat It. In early May, the teasing continued through social posts, the Repeat It (2026) audio name, and billboards in Santo Domingo that asked Ed Sheeran to release the song. The final confirmation came from Martin Garrix himself, who announced that Repeat It with Ed Sheeran would drop at midnight worldwide on Friday, May 15. After more than a decade of fan uploads, label delays, and unfinished release windows, the song is now returning as an official single instead of another clip passed around as one of EDM’s most requested IDs.

Why Repeat It Matters Beyond Its Release Date

For Martin Garrix and Ed Sheeran, Repeat It carries a history that makes the release feel different from a standard collaboration rollout, especially because the song has already lived through more than a decade of public attention before reaching its official release. It began with the 2014 studio work, became a fan-known ID after the 2015 Ultra Music Festival Miami preview, and then stayed in circulation through live rips, fan uploads, release petitions, and years of questions around whether the track would ever be cleared. That history gives Repeat It a specific place in Martin Garrix’s catalog, not just as a new single, but as a track tied to one of the most followed unreleased chapters from his festival-era rise.

The release also matters because the collaboration still reflects the unusual pairing that made people pay attention in the first place. When Martin Garrix and Ed Sheeran first worked on the song, Ed Sheeran was not regularly linked to EDM records, while Martin Garrix was still closely associated with big-room festival stages after Animals. In 2026, both artists are far beyond that original career moment, but Repeat It still carries the contrast that gave the track its early interest: Martin Garrix bringing the production into his dance music world and Ed Sheeran bringing the topline and vocal writing that made the song feel different from a typical unreleased festival ID. That is why its official release is not only about finally getting the file onto streaming platforms, but about closing a release story that fans have been following since Ultra Music Festival Miami in 2015.