Using stellar population models, the Dark Energy Survey – due to its special com- bination of area and depth (z ∼ 4) – was predicted to be in the unique position to observe massive (10^12 M⊙) galaxies at high redshift (z ~ 4), should they exist. In this paper we confront these theoretical calculations with the first ∼ 100 deg.sq. of Dark Energy Survey observations. Starting from a catalogue containing ∼ 5 million sources, ∼ 8000 were found to have observed-frame g − r vs r − i colours within the theoretical model box for z ∼ 4 massive galaxies. We further removed artefacts of var- ious kind and contamination by stars, obtaining 30 candidates lining up around the model selection. We obtained their photometric redshifts and physical properties by fitting model templates spanning a wide range of star formation histories, reddening and redshift. Golden to constrain the models is the addition of near-IR J,H,K data from the VHS survey. We find ∼ 10 robust candidates whose photometric redshift probability distribution function peaks around 4, have high M* log M ∼ 11.7 and ages around 0.3 Gyr. These values are in amazing agreement with the predictions and well match the properties of the most massive galaxies in the low-z Universe. These results, especially after spectroscopic confirmation, will set unprecedented constrains to galaxy formation and evolution models.