Even in the best of times,
Coachella can be a heavy lift – long drive, perhaps longer lines and, if you do it right, extremely long days of careening between live music sets under the intense desert sun. Every year, North America’s largest music festival generates a round of buzz and scorn in near equal measure for good reason – the sky-high prices, the deluge of cringey social media boasts, the overwhelming vibes of influencer culture. Yet the faithful keep returning (and the agnostics keep tuning in online), forking over a minimum of $649 for a three-day pass or securing a brand deal to witness what continues to be the most expansive and comprehensive music slate in the country, a genuinely exciting mix of up-and-comers gunning for a breakout set and you-had-to-be there moments such as, say, the return of Justin Bieber …
While Bieberchella dominated much of the conversation on the ground this year – his low-key but sufficient Saturday headliner set drew perhaps the biggest crowd in festival history – Coachella 2026 offered plenty of range for those not interested in the comeback of the millennial icon. Coachella may be the one thing in American currently safe from actual inflation – there was no rise in ticket prices this year, though I have to imagine that, like last year, over half of attendees are on payment plans. But the inflation mindset prevails. Following its so-called flop era two years ago, when underwhelming headliner billing led to the slowest ticket sales in over a decade, the festival has returned to conversation-dominating form with a more is more approach: more international artists catering to more potential attendees; more infrastructure (a new underground movie theater, the Bunker, was tailor-made for Radiohead’s Kid A Mnesia audiovisual experience); more investment in an impressive livestream operation, as the festival continues its shift from in-person experience to global event/brand; more surprise DJ bookings – the xx’s Romy! John Summit! – that overflowed the EDM-heavy Do LaB.
And most importantly, at least for maintaining hype both online and off: more surprise guest spots baiting nostalgia or just straight-up headlines. David Guetta, whose Saturday night set pushed the cavernous Sahara tent beyond capacity, brought out JLo for her song Save Me Tonight. A day earlier, Katseye drew an even larger crowd – the biggest ever seen in the south-east corner, according to some longtime attendees – that spilled beyond the reach of the speakers, for a set that drew mixed reviews even from the faithful but raves for its inclusion of Kpop Demon Hunters’ Huntr/x. Earlier that day, soul singer Teddy Swims catered to millennial nostalgia by bringing out Joe Jonas and Vanessa Carlton. Lizzo showed out for Sexyy Red, Camila Cabello turned up for a remix of Havana with Young Thug, and Major Lazer’s Diplo introduced MIA to audible gasps for a raucous rendition of Paper Planes, the 2008 smash they co-produced.
More Instagram activations, as well, as Coachella skews ever-more corporate — I get the ever-popular Aperol Spritz tent and a long line for elf cosmetics, but why is there an Alaska Airlines pop-up? To attend Coachella is to traipse about an adult Disneyland that is at once an escapist fantasy and a model of the brutally hierarchical economy in miniature – no matter how much space and transcendence one finds, someone is always a more comfortable, more exclusive, more social media-presentable experience than you. Celebrities were certainly making waves, for better (Hailey Bieber, beaming with pride) and for worse (whatever high school fantasy Katy Perry and Justin Trudeau were living out). But unless you were perched on the VIP gate hoping for a glimpse of Jacob Elordi rolling with the Jenner/Chalamet crew, you weren’t seeing them behind their layers of VIP. Even some significant logistical challenges – Italian DJ Anyma’s futuristic late Friday set cancelled due to high winds, a tight crowd bottleneck post-Bieber that left me stranded for nearly 30 minutes, a speaker that fell on a woman and closed Do LaB for Friday night (she’s reportedly OK) – didn’t dent the feeling that Coachella is well-oiled machine powering full steam ahead.
Coachella’s reputation as an escape is such that politics largely go unmentioned, beyond platitudes to peace and unity and some chaotic comedy from the Strokes frontman and last true rockstar, Julian Casablancas. “You guys excited about the draft?” he asked a confused crowd during Saturday night’s solid rock set. “Oh, wait, not the NFL draft. In six months, I think, everyone is gonna have to register for the military. Are you guys excited?” (Answer: no.) Sunday headliner Karol G, the festival’s first Latina headliner in its 27 years, offered an implicitly political celebration of Latina pride and pan-American unity that nodded to the current US immigration crackdown, but other than a few noted rebukes – indie band Wednesday’s Karly Hartzman declaring “Fuck ICE’ and free Palestine” at the end of their set, David Byrne projecting images of anti-ICE protests to his song Life During Wartime” – Coachella stayed a oddly sanitized zone. This is, after all, a festival quietly run by Anschutz Entertainment Group, whose owner, rightwing billionaire Philip Anschutz, funnels money to various Republican political organizations.
Still, the necessary side-eyeing aside, the festival once again delivered a mind-boggling range of top-quality entertainment and joy, from artists intent on bringing their A-game to a festival that can turbocharge a career (just ask Chappell Roan). I nearly passed out from thrashing in the heat to breakout artist Slayyyter’s pop-screamo set, which kicked the festival off on a raucous note with an unusually large crowd for a 3pm Friday slot; accessed another dimension to Nine Inch Noize’s (Nine Inch Nails + Boys Noize) subterranean, totalizing bass, in their first-ever full set; nearly hit the ceiling when Jack White played Seven Nation Army to a thrashing crowd (his very rockstar introduction of “ask me no questions and I’ll tell you no lies” is immediately entering my lexicon) and mellowed out to the sublime improv of studio wizard Dijon, backed by modern guitar god Mk.gee.
While hip-hop seemed to be de-emphasized in this year’s bookings, the festival continued to expand beyond its base of electronic and rock music toward pop, broadly construed – the cotton candy synths of Addison Rae, the mesmeric Runescape music of French electronic artist Oklou, the tight choreo of Bini, the first all-Filipino group to perform at the festival, and the singular avant garde performance art of FKA Twigs. But it has not lost its touch with its rock roots, thanks to buzzy current acts like punk crossover Turnstile and Gen Z breakout Geese, the latter of which ended their explosive, cheeky set with an audience chant to Trinidad’s demented, popular hook: “There’s a bomb in my car!!!” And once again, Coachella booked an excellent stable of veteran artists: Iggy Pop, shirtless and vital at 78 years old, who convened an all-ages mosh pit on Sunday night; electronic pioneer Moby, who led an extremely hype crowd through a “rave anthem” he played at the very first Coachella in 1999; Fatboy Slim, whose sticky Sunday night DJ set at Quasar prompted a college kid to ask me, incredulously, “Who is this artist?!”
Genuine emotional moments can be hard to come by at a festival that can feel increasingly soulless and gamified, but Coachella wouldn’t carry on without its distinct magic. I found some late Sunday night, as Karol G signed off with every whizzbang the main stage would allow, to screams of delight from so many Spanish speakers who knew every word to her groundbreaking set. Fireworks, pyrotechnics and confetti were an appropriate cap on three 12-hour days and too many glorious beat drops to count. Recession indicators may abound, but Coachella keeps betting on more.
