The first Mysteryland took place in 1993 at the Midland Circuit in Lelystad. It was put on by Sander Groet, Brian Bout and their company TNT, not yet by ID&T: the crowd came, the money did not. ID&T joined for the second edition in 1994, which also ended in debt, so there was no Mysteryland in 1995. The festival returned in 1996 at Eindhoven airport, cut down to a single night and geared to the hardcore of the gabber scene.
Years on the move followed: Bussloo, where the mud of 1997 meant calling in straw from nearby farms, the Lingebos in 1998 with 25,000 visitors, then 35,000 in 2000. In 2002 the festival switched from night to day at Ruigoord in Amsterdam. In 2003 it moved to the former grounds of the Floriade, the 2002 horticultural expo, in Vijfhuizen in the municipality of Haarlemmermeer: 40,000 visitors and 12 stages. It has stayed there ever since.
Mysteryland's identity rests on diversity: the house of the early years widened to techno, trance, hardstyle and big-stage EDM, then to hip-hop from 2006, each style handed to stage hosts, Dutch clubs and collectives first among them. The brand went to Chile in 2011, then to the United States from 2014 to 2016, on the site of the 1969 Woodstock. In the Netherlands the festival became a weekend with camping in 2015; ID&T has been part of the Superstruct group since 2021.
The organisers claim more than 125,000 visitors from over a hundred nationalities each year and more than 250 artists. The 2025 edition made the pyramid its main stage and closed a chapter with a message, "The only constant is change". The festival then skipped 2026 to rethink its concept, citing costs that had almost doubled since Covid, and announces its return to Haarlemmermeer from 27 to 29 August 2027.