From Coachella to Lollapalooza: Your Guide to the Summer Festival Season

Summer is the time for relaxing by the pool, trips to the beach and listening to your favorite songs live at a festival. Summer is the perfect time to tour and perform because so many people are on break from school and the weather is just amazing at night for the headliners. 

Welcome to summer festival season, this year is incredibly exciting! 

Many artists perform at these festivals, as it is a way to branch out their audiences and find new supporters. This festival season, there are many artists who are performing on  many of the festival stages all over the country- Hozier, Luke Combs, Benson Boone, Meg Thee Stallion and more! 

The Coachella Valley Music Festival kicks off this summer of festivals in April, and for two weeks fans get to camp out in the heart of the Valley and listen to three days of non-stop music. The headliners for this year's festival included Lady Gaga (who delivered everything and more to night one fans), Green Day, Post Malone and Travis Scott- while also highlighting performances from Charli xcx, Megan Thee Stallion, Missi Elliot, Zedd and more. The two-weekend festival had several viral videos of artist performers on Tik Tok and Instagram and already have millions of people anticipating the 2026 Coachella weekend. 

Following Coachella, Stagecoach took their place in Indio Valley, causing cowboy boot pandemonium to take the place from the boas, glitter and crochet of Coachella. Headliners of the three-day festival  included Zach Bryan, Jelly Roll and Luke Combs, along with performances from Sammy Hagar, Lana Del Ray and T-Pain. 

Grammy nominated Best New Artist, Shaboozey, was one of the only performers to take the stage at both Coachella and Stagecoach- showing that he can please fans of pop music the same way he pleases his main audience of country music listeners. 

Shortly after Stagecoach, fans flocked to Boston for the highly anticipated Boston Calling festival that featured performances from a similar, but still diverse, lineup to Stagecoach’s. T-Pain and Luke Combs made the trip from Indio Valley to Boston to headline Boston Calling, while Fall Out Boy, Dave Matthews Band and Avril Lavigne made their first festival performances of the season. The mixture of genres stretched from pop to indie to country to rap- there was something for everyone at this year's Boston Calling. 

Next up in the summer of festivals was supposed to be the Bonnaroo Music Festival in Tennessee; with performances from Olivia Rodrigo, Hozier, Tyler, The Creator and (for a third time) Luke Combs. The weekend was supposed to be run similar to that of Coachella, concert-goers camped on the festival grounds and woke up everyday to the sound of diversified music- but unfortunately the festival was cancelled after day one because of unprecedented amounts of rain. 

The highly sought after and anticipated festival, Lollapalooza, closes out the summer of festivals. Held in Chicago every August, fans flock from all around the country and even the world to attend the three-day festival in the heat of the summer. Tyler, The Creator, Olivia Rodrigo, Sabrina Carpenter and Djo are some of the headline acts for this year's Lollapalooza with performances from over 170 other artists. Lollapalooza is a major festival that gets crowds of around 1 million people every year.

Festival time is when the summer season truly starts- there is truly nothing better than spending 3-days of listening to nonstop music from your favorite artists, and even finding a new favorite.

Happy festival-going everyone!