Armin van Buuren in drag was not on anyone’s list of predictions for this television season. On Saturday night, September 12, the Dutch DJ was unmasked as Daisy Belle, the mystery queen of RTL 4’s drag show Make Up Your Mind, after a one time performance in full drag. By Sunday he had taken to Instagram to explain why he did it, and the answer had very little to do with television and a lot to do with the dance floor: everyone should feel safe to be themselves.

How the Armin van Buuren drag reveal went down

Make Up Your Mind has been running on RTL 4 since 2021. The format is simple: Dutch celebrities are transformed into drag queens, they perform, and a panel tries to guess who is hiding under the wig. Each season also features a mystery queen, an unannounced guest whose identity is revealed at the end of the show. This year the program moved from its usual spring slot to a September and October run, and the third episode delivered its biggest surprise so far.

Host Carlo Boszhard built the reveal slowly, introducing Daisy Belle as a very special mystery queen before finally saying the name out loud. The audience gave Van Buuren a standing ovation, and the panel of Fred van Leer, Francis van Broekhuizen and Nikkie de Jager reacted with a mix of disbelief and delight. Van Buuren told them the transformation had taken about five hours in the makeup chair, and joked that he was glad to still be standing after performing in heels.

According to Dutch ratings coverage, the episode pulled 823,000 viewers and won its Saturday night slot outright, a strong number for RTL 4 in the opening weeks of the new television season. The reveal quickly spread beyond the Netherlands once clips and photos of Daisy Belle began circulating on social media.

“Be who you want to be”: the message behind the performance

Van Buuren is known for being selective about television appearances, so the obvious question was why he said yes to this one. He answered it himself in a video and a written statement posted to his Instagram story after the broadcast. The video opened with “Hey guys, it’s Armin, not in my usual outfit”, and the text that followed was unusually direct for an artist who rarely wades into social debates.

He wrote that he appeared as the Mystery Queen in a one time performance on Make Up Your Mind, and that for him it was never just about dressing up or surprising people. It was about supporting something he believes in: that everyone should feel safe to be themselves. He acknowledged that subjects like this can feel like a taboo, but added that sometimes you should speak up for something you feel is right.

The part of the statement that resonated most with the dance community was his framing of the issue in terms of the music itself. Music and dance, he wrote, have always been about freedom, expression and bringing people together, and he wants everyone to be themselves and feel safe on dance floors worldwide. He closed with the line that gave the whole episode its meaning: be who you want to be.

Drag, safety and the roots of dance music

On the show itself, Van Buuren connected the decision to his own events. He told the panel that he organizes parties himself and wants everyone who attends to be able to be who they are, because unfortunately that is not possible everywhere. He also described drag as art, and called the experience fantastic.

In a follow up conversation with RTL Boulevard the next day, he was more candid about the reaction. Most of the responses had been positive, he said, but there had also been negative ones, mainly from outside the Netherlands. He said that comes with the territory and that he stands by his statement, but that it had made him think about how much more hostile the climate around drag and the LGBTQ+ community has become. He also pointed out something that anyone who knows the history of this music already understands: dance music comes in large part from the LGBTQ+ community, and he finds it important that everyone can be themselves.

That history is not a footnote. House music grew out of Black and Latino gay clubs in Chicago and New York in the late 1970s and early 1980s, in rooms like the Warehouse and the Paradise Garage, and venues such as New York’s Limelight built their reputations on nights where queer clubbers set the tone. A trance DJ from Leiden putting on a wig for prime time television is a very different thing from those underground rooms, but the message he attached to it is the same one those scenes were built on.

The reaction online

The clip and photos traveled fast. A post by House Music US on Instagram sharing the news drew close to 10,000 likes and more than 1,800 comments within hours, and the comment section became its own case study in the divide Van Buuren was describing. Plenty of fans called the performance iconic and praised him for using his platform, while others posted the kind of hostility he had referred to in his RTL Boulevard interview. Several commenters pushed back on the criticism by pointing out exactly where house and dance music come from.

Van Buuren has spent more than two decades as one of the most visible figures in electronic music, with a weekly radio show that reaches millions and headline slots at festivals across the world, including a top billing at Parookaville 2026 earlier this summer. Using that visibility for a statement about inclusion on the dance floor, and doing it in a way that invited ridicule from the people he was calling out, is a bigger gesture than a single television appearance might suggest.

What happens next

Van Buuren has framed the appearance as a one off, and there is no indication that Daisy Belle will be returning to a festival stage near you. Make Up Your Mind continues its fall run on RTL 4 with new mystery queens still to be revealed. For the dance music world, the more lasting takeaway is the statement itself: one of the genre’s biggest names went on national television to say that dance floors should be safe places for everyone, and then repeated it when the backlash arrived. Details on the format and its history are on the show’s Wikipedia page.

Source: @arminvanbuuren Instagram story via @housemusic.us on Instagram, RTL Boulevard, Ditjes en Datjes and TVgids.nl.