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Meet Jyoty, the DJ We’re Watching at Portola Music Festival 2026
Jyoty (pronounced “JYO-tee”) is an Amsterdam-born, London-based DJ, broadcaster and curator raised by Punjabi Indian parents. Her sets have taken her around the world; her 2019 Boiler Room performance helped introduce her to a much larger online audience, and her approach to music rarely stays inside a single genre. Her musical upbringing included Bollywood, qawwali, bhangra, and the sounds she heard growing up at home.
With Portola taking place September 26 and 27, there is still time to get familiar with the artists beyond the biggest names on the poster. For Sanskar Savvy, Jyoty is exactly the type of discovery that gives us another way to Celebrate, Explore, Connect! while following where South Asian artists and influences are showing up in global music.
Portola Returns to San Francisco This September
Portola Music Festival will return to Pier 80 in San Francisco for two days on September 26 and 27. The 21-and-over festival has built its lineup around electronic music, dance, pop, hip-hop and artists who often move between those spaces. This year’s lineup includes Robyn, DOG BLOOD, Swedish House Mafia, Tiësto, Four Tet, Fatboy Slim, DJ Shadow, Skepta, Kelela, Groove Armada and more.
Jyoty is scheduled as part of the Saturday lineup. Some Portola fans may be discovering Jyoty for the first time, but she has spent years building an audience through radio, nightlife and festival sets.
Portola also includes Four Tet, whose mother is Indian, adding another South Asian connection to this year’s lineup. For this month’s festival spotlight, though, we wanted to look more closely at Jyoty and the cultural influences she has spoken about throughout her career.
Jyoty Did Not Start Out Planning to Become a DJ
Jyoty’s path into music did not begin with a plan to tour festivals. After growing up in Amsterdam, she moved to London in 2012 to pursue a master’s degree. She worked several jobs while becoming increasingly involved in the city’s music and nightlife scene, including working at The Nest and around Boiler Room events. A connection at Rinse FM eventually led to a radio opportunity, where her ability to find music, interview artists, and develop her own point of view as a curator began attracting an audience.
DJing came later. Jyoty has explained that she initially turned down opportunities because she did not know how to beatmatch. When Jamz Supernova asked her to play an event in 2017, she practiced on CDJs in the Rinse FM studio before performing her first set. She kept learning, and two years later, a 2019 Boiler Room appearance became a major turning point. Clips from the performance spread widely online during the pandemic and introduced her to audiences far beyond the clubs and radio spaces where she had already been building her career.
Trying to put one genre next to Jyoty’s name misses much of what makes her sets interesting.. Her musical world includes R&B, rap, house, garage, grime, dancehall, and electronic music, with sets that can move quickly between styles instead of following a predictable formula. She moves between those sounds without treating them as separate musical worlds.
Her Punjabi Upbringing Is Part of That Story
Jyoty’s South Asian identity has always been part of her story. She has described herself as Punjabi Indian and has spoken repeatedly about the music that surrounded her growing up.
Earlier this year, Patta’s The Listening Room explored the sounds that shaped her life. Jyoty grew up hearing Bollywood soundtracks and qawwali, with Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan playing in her mother’s living room and bhangra at family weddings. Those sounds existed alongside Dutch hip-hop, R&B, electronic music, and music from the Moroccan and Turkish communities around her in Amsterdam.
That mix makes her story particularly interesting. Jyoty does not need to fit neatly into the label of a Punjabi DJ or an Indian DJ for those influences to matter. Those influences sit alongside the music she discovered through radio, clubs, her community and the cities she has called home.
For South Asian listeners who grew up moving between a Bollywood soundtrack at home, bhangra at a family function, and completely different music with friends, that relationship with sound feels familiar. The genres do not always need to be separated because they were never completely separate in the first place.
Her story is about playing major rooms and festival stages, but it is also about making the path into those spaces a little more visible for people coming behind her.
Why We Are Watching Jyoty at Portola
Part of the fun of a festival lineup is discovering the names you did not originally buy the ticket to see. Portola has plenty of established artists at the top of its 2026 poster, but some of the most interesting stories appear as you keep reading.
Jyoty is one of them. Her career has taken her from Amsterdam to London and into clubs and festivals around the world, while her sets continue to pull from different genres and generations.. Her Punjabi Indian upbringing sits alongside those influences rather than outside them, creating an approach to music that reflects what it can feel like to grow up surrounded by several cultures at once.
That is also why we want to keep looking at major festival lineups through a Sanskar Savvy lens. South Asian representation does not always arrive in the form people expect. Sometimes it is an Indian artist performing Indian music. Sometimes it is a Punjabi Dutch DJ whose musical memories include Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan in her mother’s living room, bhangra at family weddings, and the sounds of Amsterdam nightlife.
As we Celebrate, Explore, Connect!, we want to Celebrate artists whose stories reflect the many ways South Asian culture travels, Explore the festival lineups introducing us to new names, and Connect our community with artists they may want on their playlists long after the festival ends.
Portola Music Festival takes place September 26 and 27, 2026, at Pier 80 in San Francisco. Jyoty is part of the festival’s Saturday lineup.
Want to check it out? Get your tickets now.
