Kings of Tomorrow near Sozopol on August 14 - Sandy Rivera and the Finally classic on the Black Sea coast

Kings of Tomorrow, which is to say Sandy Rivera, arrives on the Bulgarian coast on August 14, 2026. The set is at Dirty Gradina near Sozopol and starts late, at 23:00.

Sandy Rivera is an American DJ and producer born in New York. He has been DJing since he was thirteen, in Spanish Harlem, and started producing house in 1992, committing straight away to the soulful end of the genre. He has worked under several names, among them Kings of Tomorrow, Soul Vision and Mysterious People.

One track carries the whole centre of gravity of his career. "Finally", a collaboration with Julie McKnight released in 2001, became an instant classic. In Britain it reached number twenty-four on the singles chart, and in the US number seventeen on Billboard's Dance Club Songs chart in 2002. Thirty years on, that record is still named among the best vocal house tracks anyone has made.

Dirty Gradina is an open-air summer club, part of the scene that forms every summer along the Black Sea coast between Sozopol and Burgas. That is a context in which soulful house works differently than it does indoors. The music runs until morning, and the crowd is a mix of Bulgarian and foreign visitors to the coast.

Tickets run from fifteen to twenty-five euros, roughly 920 to 1,540 denars, through bilet.bg. For readers spending the summer on the Bulgarian coast, this is a name that usually costs a great deal more at a Western European festival.