Thierry Coppens

Every year, the Red Bull Elektropedia Lifetime Achievement Award is awarded to people who have made an enormous contribution to Belgian electronic music. We gladly announce that this year's awards will go to someone who might not be familiar to many at first, but his accomplishments in the nightlife scene have been hard to underestimate. Despite his relative obscurity outside the gay community, this man shares responsibility with Peter Decuypere for the birth of Fuse, and he sells out more events a year than any other promoter does. Do you know any party in Belgium that has been going for longer than a whopping 29 years? Neither do we. To this day, his La Demence event takes place in Fuse every month (with the occasional field trip to its own cruise ship or to massive venues like Palais 12), making it – by far – one of the most important gay parties in our country, if not the continent. Coppens isn’t planning on slowing down though, so better get familiar with this incredibly friendly stalwart figure in the Belgian nightlife scene.