Tempo · aka Trance tempo, What BPM is trance
Trance BPM (Tempo By Subgenre)
Trance sits between roughly 128 and 150 BPM. Progressive trance runs 128–134 BPM, vocal trance 132–140 BPM, uplifting and epic trance 136–142 BPM, and hard trance 140–150 BPM. The genre's spiritual centre is 138 BPM — the tempo Armada named its classic-trance sub-label 'Who's Afraid Of 138?!' after.
The BPM ranges below are the ones DJs, promoters and A&Rs actually work to when classifying trance records — not academic definitions.
Progressive trance (128–134 BPM): Sasha's 'Xpander' at 128, Chicane's 'Saltwater' at 130, Energy 52's 'Café Del Mar' 1997 remix at 138 (an outlier — the original was 120). Records at this tempo are designed for long-form DJ sets and Balearic-adjacent sunset programming.
Vocal trance (132–140 BPM): Delerium's 'Silence' Tiësto remix at 138, iiO's 'Rapture' at 133, Motorcycle's 'As The Rush Comes' at 132. The tempo is slightly held back to give the vocal room to breathe.
Uplifting and epic trance (136–142 BPM): Paul van Dyk's 'For An Angel' E-Werk mix at 138, Ferry Corsten's 'Out Of The Blue' at 140, Tiësto's 'Adagio For Strings' at 138, Armin van Buuren's Who's Afraid Of 138?! catalogue almost entirely at 138 by design. This is the peak-time trance tempo.
Hard trance (140–150 BPM): Yoji Biomehanika, Scot Project, most Bonzai Records peak-time output. Any trance record above 150 BPM has essentially crossed into hardstyle territory.
DJs mixing across the genre typically pitch tracks within a ±3% range of their original BPM. That is why a good classic-trance set can hold 138–140 BPM for an hour without ever feeling monotonous — the mixer's pitch fader is doing the smoothing.