The lineup for the 2026 Stagecoach Festival in southern California was announced Thursday morning, with Lainey Wilson, Post Malone and Cody Johnson set to headline the nightly bills next April. They stand atop a diverse lineup that ranges from the hottest of country’s fresh faces, like Ella Langley, to veteran acts like Brooks & Dunn, and from pop-soul star Teddy Swims and hip-hop up-and-comer BigXthaPlug to rockers from the ’80s and ’90s like Journey, Bush and Third Eye Blind.
It’s a rare instance in which Stagecoach has no repeats at the very top of the bill. Neither Wilson, Malone nor Johnson has been a headliner at Stagecoach in any prior year, although all three have appeared at the festival in lower slots before.
“None of those three people will come as a surprise,” Stacy Vee, EVP of Goldenvoice, who oversees the festival every year, tells Variety. “Although it will be their first time headlining, they are certainly all headliners that we have been talking to for a long time. Cody is straight-up rodeo, working-man country. Lainey is as big as you can be, with so many hits. And Post Malone is the new class, but he has a really authentic, classic sound and appreciation for it. With Riley Green, who is having such a moment right now, Bailey Zimmerman, Ella Langley, and everyone from Teddy Swims to Brooks & Dunn, I just think that every part of country music is represented on the lineup this year.”
Despite the presence of acts from outside the genre, country is still Stagecoach’s bread and butter. Besides the headliners, artists on the bill who currently have a high profile in mainstream country include Langley, Zimmerman, Green, Little Big Town, Brett Young, Chase Rice and Gavin Adcock. The big-name country veterans on the bill are Brooks & Dunn and Wynonna Judd — and, Vee reminds us, Lyle Lovett, who may be more identified with singer/songwriter or Americana music now but was a mainstream Nashville hitmaker back in the day.
Bordering on country, but considered more of a rock act, are the currently red-hot Red Clay Strays. Skewing more toward the Americana or singer-songwriter side of the fence are such acts as S.G. Goodman and Larkin Poe.
The significant contingent of non-country/throwback artists at Stagecoach always draws attention, with the fest typically drawing big crowds for classic rock in the side tent. Rockers of a certain vintage booked for 2026 include Journey, Counting Crows, Bush, the Wallflowers, Third Eye Blind and Hootie & the Blowfish (the last of which has a frontman, Darius Rucker, who has been no stranger to Stagecoach in his solo country career).
Representing hip-hop, old or new, are BigXthaPlug, Ludacris and Pitbull. Meanwhile, hit top 40 balladeer Teddy Swims may be the oddest man out, as far as being in a chart-dominating pop-hitmaker category of his own at Stagecoach. (Scroll down to see a full list of artists.)
The festival will take place April 24-26, 2026, as always the weekend after the second week of Coachella on the same site, Indio’s iconic Empire Polo Club, presented by the same promoter, Goldenvoice. Festival passes go on sale Oct. 2 at 11 a.m. PT at stagecoachfestival.com.
How long will potential attendees have to make a decision about whether to bite the bullet? Maybe not long — last year’s Stagecoach sold out by the end of October. That one had the biggest male artist in all of music, Morgan Wallen, topping the bill, so that may have affected the rush, but this year’s show could certainly go just as fast, given the fest’s audience loyalty as well as the lineup’s potency.
Vee told Variety about why these three headliners are such a triple-threat, to her mind.
“Post Malone is somebody who played a direct support slot on the Mane Stage two years ago,” Vee says. “When we booked Post for Stagecoach last time, that was his first country look. He hadn’t performed at the CMA Awards yet. He hadn’t put out his country record yet; he hadn’t done any of that. So it was kind of his first taste of the country community, and I’m happy to say we must have made a great impression on him, because he just continues to stay in our space.”
As for Cody Johnson, who is one of the leading nominees for this year’s CMA Awards, “This will be Cody’s fourth time playing. In 2017 and 2019, he played the Palomino stage, and then came back in ‘22 to play the main stage, and now he’s headlining the Mane Stage, so it’s just a really wonderful journey Cody’s had, because we can put him anywhere. He started on the Palomino stage where we celebrate country music’s legends and the alt-country and outlaw country and the curve balls and things like that, but then over the years he has become a household name and is being recognized so much as one of country music’s biggest superstars. So it’s really fun to see his growth, from the Palomino stage to Mane Stage over the years. I love when artists have played both. Midland started off that way, too.”
Stacy Vee, EVP, Goldenvoice, attends Variety Power of Women Los Angeles presented by Lifetime at Mother Wolf on November 16, 2023 in Los Angeles, California.
Variety
Then there’s Wilson, who has arguably become country’s ambassador to the world, in some ways, and is tied with Langley for the most nominations at the CMAs, after already having been named entertainer of the year. When we mention that Wilson had already been peaking and could have been booked for that slot a year ago, Vee retorts, reasonably: “Lainey Wilson is not close to peaking. I think we’re gonna see her star continue to rise for a long time… She was on Yellowstone and she hosts awards shows as wel as winning so many awards. She’s always out supporting developing artists, especially women, and advocating for them. So she’s just such a superstar in the space. And her live set is second to no one.”
As for some of the non-country acts that always draw a lot of attention every time a Stagecoach bill is announced, but should come as no surprise to festival veterans, Vee said she felt a special motivation for upping the rock quotient this year.
“I did that intentionally because there’s a lot of really high-energy country artists who like to rock,” says the Goldenvoice EVP. “And “I would put Warren Zeiders and Gavin Adcock in that category, and there’s a lot of other really high-energy stuff on the lineup this year: Ty Meyers, Max McNown, Wyatt Flores, Sam Barber, Marcus King Band. There’s a lot of really high-energy country stuff that borders on rock. Another rock band is Red Clay Strays and Treaty Oak Revival — they are not country bands; they identify themselves as a rock band.”
So with the added veteran rock acts, she says, “I just thought that that was a really nice way to enhance the lineup. And we saw such success with Goo Goo Dolls last year. I don’t know if you watched that set or not, but it was pure magicon the Palomino stage. So after just seeing how well the Stagecoach audience responded to that, I just kind of leaned in a little bit more with the ‘90s alt of it all, with Third Eye Blind, Wallflowers, Bush and Counting Crows.”
Perhaps the biggest surprise on the bill, since he doesn’t fit in with any exact template Stagecoach has had in the past: “Teddy Swims is a really fun crossover act. He’s pop, he’s soul, and I think that he will be embraced really well by the Stagecoach audience,” Vee says. As a point of trivia, “You might notice he’s on the Coachella lineup too, so it’s fun to have Teddy on both shows.”
Swims is the only artist doing both festivals back-to-back next year, except for Diplo, who has always done a late-night DJ set at Stagecoach in recent years, and will be on the Coachella lineup as well in 2026 as a member of Major Laser.
The potential for collaborations seems strong with BigXthaPlug’s set. “He just released a new album and every single song is a collaboration with a giant country music artist,” Vee points out. “We’re talking Luke Combs, Jelly Roll, Thomas Rhett, Tucker Wetmore, and a few that are playing Stagecoach — Bailey Zimmerman, Ella, Darius Rucker and Ink are all on the lineup this year. But he is a hip-hop act that really, really leans into his, his Texas roots and loves the genre. He also played at the Sand in My Boots Festival we partnered with Morgan Wallen on last year, and he is just in love with country music and loves to align himself in the space. So he was a natural fit for Stagecoach 2026.”
For the many thousands of fans who will prefer to experience the festival as Stage-couch, Amazon Music is returning as its streaming partner for a fourth successive year.
The full lineup for Stagecoach 2026, in alphabetical order of first name:
Adrien Nunez
Amos Lee
Avery Anna
Bailey Zimmerman
Bayker Blankenship
Benjamin Tod
BigXthaPlug
Billy Bob Thornton & The Boxmasters
Brandon Wisham
Braxton Keith
Brett Young
Brooks & Dunn
Bush
Cameron Whitcomb
Charles Wesley Godwin
Chase Matthew
Chase Rice
Cody Johnson
Corey Kent
Counting Crows
Diplo
Eli Young Band
Elizabeth Nichols
Ella Langley
Gabriella Rose
Gavin Adcock
Guy Fieri
Hannah McFarland
Hootie & the Blowfish
Hudson Westbrook
Ink
Jake Worthington
Josh Ross
Journey
Julia Cole
Kameron Marlowe
Kevin Smiley
Lainey Wilson
Lane Pittman
Larkin Poe
Little Big Town
Ludacris
Lyle Lovett
Marcus King Band
Max McNown
Michael Marcagi
Nate Smith
Neon Union
Noah Cyrus
Noah Rinker
Ole 60
Pitbull
Post Malone
Redferrin
Red Clay Strays
Riley Green
Ryan Hurd
S.G. Goodman
Sam Barber
Something Out West
Tayler Holder
Teddy Swims
The Road
The Wallflowers
Third Eye Blind
Treaty Oak Revival
Tyler Braden
Ty Myers
Warren Zeiders
Willow Avalon
Wyatt Flores
Wynonna Judd
Zach John King
