After 18 years, Sunwaves leaves Romania: rominimal's marathon pilgrimage hits the road

For 18 years the deepest minimal heads on the planet pointed their calendar at one stretch of Romanian sand. Now the ritual is leaving home. Sunwaves has confirmed that SW35, held May 1 to 5, 2025 at Mamaia Nord, was the last edition staged on Romania's Black Sea coast, and the team is moving the whole thing across borders.

This is not a small festival relocating. This is the spiritual headquarters of rominimal, the slow, hypnotic, marathon-session sound that Raresh, Rhadoo and Petre Inspirescu built into a global export, picking up its sand and walking.

Why is Sunwaves leaving Romania?

The organisers did not dress it up. "Unfortunately things are the way that they are and it's out of our control," they wrote, pointing at the conditions around staging the event at home. Regulars have for years described heavy police presence around the site, and the statement reads like the end of a long, losing fight with the logistics of throwing a five-day, dusk-to-dawn rave on a public beach.

What they refused to do was let it sound like a breakup with the audience. "Our love for our country and our local audience will always be part of #SW," the team wrote. "We'll meet like we did before on various continents, in countries that share our values, in places where our community is treated with respect."

"We'll meet like we did before on various continents, in countries that share our values, in places where our community is treated with respect."

Where does Sunwaves go now?

The answer came fast: SW36 landed in Roquetas de Mar, on the Almeria coast in southern Spain, running September 4 to 8, 2025. Same blueprint, different sea. Five days, more than 50 artists, the marathon b2b sessions that stretch into the daylight, now under Mediterranean palms instead of Black Sea wind. The 2025 Romanian send-off itself carried the lineup that tells you what this scene is: Ricardo Villalobos, Sonja Moonear, Seth Troxler, tINI, Priku and Praslea among them.

The open question is whether the magic was the music or the place. Sunwaves was never just a booking sheet. It was Mamaia at 6am, a specific light, a specific sand, an audience that travelled for it. Porting that to Spain is a real bet that rominimal is a sound you can pack in a flight case, not a thing that only happens on one beach.