Hardstyle
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7correct to beat the crowd
40 free Hardstyle trivia questions with answers — music quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Hardstyle is dance music turned up as far as it will go: a distorted kick drum, a tempo that leaves most club music far behind, and melodies built to be shouted back by tens of thousands of people. It started in a handful of European clubs at the end of the 1990s and now fills stadiums and festival fields on several continents. This quiz covers the whole scene. There are questions on how the sound is made and the styles it grew out of, on the festivals and their traditions, on the companies and labels that built the business, and on the DJs and producers whose names every fan knows. It suits anyone who has stood in front of a festival main stage, anyone who follows the harder side of electronic music, and anyone curious about how a niche Dutch club sound became a worldwide draw.
30 of 40 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Each stage at the Defqon.1 hardstyle festival is named after a colour; which colour is the main open-air stage?
Red
Red hosts the headliners and the firework-and-laser endshows that close Saturday and Sunday. The Blue stage, by contrast, is the main indoor one.
Q 02The hardstyle DJ Ran-D first played his crossover cover of Zombie in 2016; which Irish band recorded the original?
The Cranberries
The Cranberries' song became many listeners' first taste of hardstyle after mainstream DJs such as Armin van Buuren and Hardwell picked up Ran-D's version.
Q 03The Dutch promoter Q-dance works a Q into most of its event names, and says the letter stands for what?
Quality
Quality is the claim, and the Q replaces a C or K in event names such as Qapital, Qountdown and The Qontinent.
Q 04Which German rave band took jumpstyle, a close relative of hardstyle, to number one on the UK Albums Chart?
Scooter
Scooter's album Jumping All Over the World topped the UK chart at the commercial peak of jumpstyle, a style whose leg-kicking dance is known as jumpen.
Q 05Defqon.1 ran an Australian edition from 2009 to 2018 at an international regatta centre in which city?
Sydney
Sydney hosted the festival for a decade before the New South Wales premier vowed to stop it returning after two deaths at the 2018 edition.
Q 06Which Dutch hardstyle star, who also dubs films into Dutch as a voice actor, signed to Ultra Music in 2013?
Headhunterz
Headhunterz first heard the genre on a spare ticket to a Q-dance night in 2003. After his years with Ultra he returned at the closing ceremony of Defqon.1 in 2017.
Q 07Hardstyle's earliest artists came mainly from the Netherlands and which other country, home of the pioneer Technoboy?
Italy
Italy supplied much of the early sound through producers such as Technoboy, a Bologna native who mixed a long-running series of hardstyle compilation CDs.
Q 08Which darker subgenre of hardstyle, with little or no melody, arose around 2010 as fans tired of tuneful tracks?
Rawstyle
Rawstyle takes its harsher elements from mainstream hardcore and from hardstyle's own early years. Big festivals now give it stages of its own.
Q 09At which Belgian festival has the hardstyle promoter Q-dance hosted its own stage ever since the first edition in 2005?
Tomorrowland
Tomorrowland put a hardstyle act on its mainstage for the first time in 2018, thirteen years after that first Q-dance stage.
Q 10Which indoor hardstyle night at Arnhem's GelreDome stadium did Q-dance end for good after its 2024 edition?
Qlimax
Qlimax drew close to 30,000 people a year and was known for its mysterious themes. Q-dance blamed rising costs when it announced the finale.
Q 11Which duo of brothers from Eindhoven left hardstyle for chart hits with David Guetta, then returned in 2023?
Showtek
Showtek, the brothers Wouter and Sjoerd Janssen, made the 2014 hit Bad with Guetta and marked their return with the hardstyle album 360 Blue in 2024.
Q 12Which fast Dutch hardcore style, an influence on hardstyle, takes its name from Amsterdam slang for a mate?
Gabber
Gabber reached Amsterdam slang from a Yiddish word for friend. Its 1990s fans were known for tracksuits, shaved heads and Nike Air Max trainers.
Q 13Which Amsterdam Arena dance event split into a White night and a harder Black night featuring hardstyle?
Sensation
Sensation made everyone at the harder night dress from head to toe in black, with a bill that built from gentler acts up to hardcore.
Q 21Which Dutch DJ, born Fabian Bohn, built the label and brand I Am Hardstyle after leaving Scantraxx in 2012?
Brennan Heart
Brennan Heart began in the duo Brennan & Heart with DJ Thera, and kept the name when the pair split after more than three years.
Q 22What do hardstyle producers call the technique of playing a bassline using only the distorted kick drum?
Pitching
Pitching works because a hardstyle kick rings on long enough to carry a note, so one sound supplies both the thump and the tune.
Q 23From which older European genre, popular at 1990s mega-raves, did early hardstyle inherit its offbeat low end?
Hard trance
Hard trance peaked in the late 1990s and then faded as its sound flowed into hardstyle and jumpstyle.
Q 14Besides the Netherlands and Australia, which country staged Defqon.1 near its capital in 2015 and 2016?
Chile
Chile held its two editions in December at Peñaflor, outside Santiago, after Q-dance had tested the market there with a standalone show in 2013.
Q 15Which name was given in 2010 to the fusion of hardstyle kicks with dubstep's wobbling basslines?
Dubstyle
Dubstyle keeps the hardstyle kick but drags its low end out over a two-step or breakstep rhythm, so it drops the strict offbeat pattern.
Q 16Which Dutch hardcore producer, a regular at Defqon.1 and Dominator, performs behind a white hockey mask?
Angerfist
Angerfist is often called the King of Hardcore, and the mask was inspired by Jason Voorhees of the Friday the 13th films.
Q 17Which word describes the tuneful, highly emotional branch of hardstyle that took off around 2010?
Euphoric
Euphoric hardstyle is built on big emotional melodies, and its boom pushed other producers toward a deliberately darker sound.
Q 18Which Belgian hardstyle DJ founded the Dirty Workz label in 2006?
Coone
Coone started producing at 15 and broke through under another alias with Eating Donuts, a remix of Blur's Song 2.
Q 19Which hardstyle DJ reached Dutch daytime radio in 2012 with the platinum-selling single Year of Summer?
Wildstylez
Wildstylez made the track with singer Niels Geusebroek, and in 2023 it became the first hardstyle song voted into Dutch radio's Top 2000.
Q 20Which DJ, a 1990s hardcore pioneer born Dov Elkabas, founded the hardstyle label Scantraxx in 2002?
The Prophet
The Prophet moved from hardcore to hardstyle because he disliked the push to make hardcore ever harder. He retired after a farewell tour in 2023.
Q 24What is the name of the hard, distorted offbeat note that sits between the kicks in early hardstyle tracks?
Reverse bass
Reverse bass came from the genre's 1990s forerunners and survives in modern tracks as a build-up before the drop.
Q 25Since 2011 Defqon.1 has been held beside the Walibi Holland theme park in which Dutch village?
Biddinghuizen
Biddinghuizen also hosts the Lowlands festival, and the move there let Defqon.1 fans camp on site for the first time.
Q 26Which hardstyle act is led by Bas Oskam, a one-time high-school geography teacher who went solo in 2013?
Noisecontrollers
Noisecontrollers began as a duo who met on an online forum, and Arjan Terpstra left in 2013 to explore other styles of dance music.
Q 27Which rave dance from the 1990s Dutch hardcore scene, with quick steps landing on the heel, is now done to hardstyle?
Hakken
Hakken follows the kick drum at up to 190 BPM, and the lower body does most of the work, though arms and torso often join in.
Q 28The Q-dance logo, a Q formed by a 120-degree turn, was inspired by which piece of DJ equipment?
A mixer knob
A mixer knob turned 120 degrees to the right makes the letter, a fitting badge for a company that works a Q into nearly every event name.
Q 29Which Dutch dance-events giant, named after its three founders' initials, bought the promoter Q-dance in 2006?
ID&T
ID&T stands for Irfan van Ewijk, Duncan Stutterheim and Theo Lelie. After the deal, Q-dance founder Wouter Tavecchio became chief executive of the whole group.
Q 30Which Dutch duo, who met through YouTube and signed to Dirty Workz at 16 and 17, are known for 'psy-style' kicks?
Sub Zero Project
Sub Zero Project gained the last word of the name when Thomas Velderman joined Nigel Coppen, who had been making music alone as Sub Zero.