The IMS Business Report 2026 reveals that the global electronic music ecosystem is now worth $15.1 billion — with Afro house exploding, Ibiza clubs hauling in €160 million, and the Global South building its own festival infrastructure.

The IMS Business Report 2026 has just dropped, and the numbers tell a story that’s as wild as the scenes it measures. The global electronic music ecosystem is now worth $15.1 billion, growing 7% year‑on‑year and solidifying its place as one of the most resilient and rapidly expanding creative economies in music. The snapshot, compiled by MIDiA Research for the International Music Summit, shows that streaming, festivals, clubs, publishing, and creator‑tools all contributed to the climb, but what’s most striking is how the growth is no longer centered on the usual suspects — the future is increasingly Afro‑driven, AI‑assisted, and rooted in the Global South.

Within that macro figure, the genre‑level data screams of a seismic shift. Afro house has grown an astonishing 82% in a single year, jumping to become one of the most‑searched genres on producer‑platform Splice and the fastest‑rising sound in the 2025–26 cycle. The genre that once circulated mainly in local barrios and regional raves has now become a global search‑engine phenomenon, with millions of producers reaching for its percussive runs, vocal cuts, and groove‑first logic. The IMS report uses this data as a forward‑looking indicator: what producers search for on Splice today is what tomorrow’s sets will be built on.

At the same time, the IMS numbers confirm that the electronic music world is still tethered to its geographic heartlands. Ibiza, long the symbolic capital of club‑style EDM, continues to haul in an estimated €160 million annually from its club and after‑party ecosystem alone — a figure that underlines how deeply the island is embedded in the global party economy. Yet those euro signs sit alongside images of protesters outside the same clubs, locals blocking viewpoints and calling for restrictions on tourism, liquor sales, and late‑night revelry. The tension between economic pull and local push is now one of the central contradictions of the sector: the places that built electronic music’s mythos are also the ones struggling to live with it.

Perhaps the most telling subplot of the 2026 report is the quiet, continent‑by‑continent construction of electronic‑music infrastructure in the Global South. From Lagos to Panama City, from São Paulo to Nairobi, the scene is no longer “importing” European sounds and importing European‑style festivals; it’s building its own club cultures, its own resident‑driven mixes, and its own festivals that reflect local histories and local party traditions. The IMS data flags regional scenes as a long‑term growth driver — not because they’ll dethrone Ibiza or Las Vegas, but because they’ll create their own gravitational centers around which careers, labels, and communities can orbit. Everything is shifting — the money, the regions, and the very definition of what counts as “electronic” music in the 2026 ecosystem.