Whilst heading out into the desert to bake in temperatures up there with a trip to the sun is not for everyone (me), there is a lot to get excited about glancing through the line-up for next year’s Coachella festival. One of the handy things about the Californian festival, other than the fact it removes a high percentage of the world’s influencers from day-to-day existence for a short period, is that it’s in April and so unveils its booked artists months ahead of UK festivals. It’s gone even earlier with its announcement this year, therefore giving us a strong hint of which bands and acts will be back in action ahead of time. Here’s what we can gather will be whetting our appetites in 2026 from the line-up poster unveiled earlier this week:
Nine Inch… what?
The most curious name to stand out on the Coachella poster was that of Nine Inch Noize, just under Friday headliner Sabrina Carpenter. Anyone who has witnessed Nine Inch Nails’ on their thrilling Peel It Back tour might hazard a guess at what it is – those shows featured a section where NiN’s Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross were joined by support act Boys Noize to rework NiN cuts into dance bangers. A NiN rep confirmed to Rolling Stone that this is a full show version of that team-up. It hints at further collaboration in the future and, if it’s anything like Boys Noize’s full album remix of Reznor and Ross’s Challengers soundtrack, it’ll be the must-see performance of the festival.
Radiohead will be there... but not in person
Tucked away at the bottom of the poster is the line, “The Bunker Debut Of Radiohead Kid A Mnesia”. Whilst US fans of the Oxford giants will be hoping that this means Thom Yorke & co. are following the announcement of their first European and UK tour in seven years with some US dates, they shouldn’t be getting too excited. This is more likely to be a US trip for the band’s multi-media-stranded exhibition that accompanied their 2021 reissue Kid A Mnesia, a collaboration with Epic Games. But it is promising that Radiohead seem to be active on all fronts at the moment and it’s unlikely they will make American fans wait too long if the European dates go well (which they will).
The Strokes will put their below-par years behind them
2026 will be a momentous year for the New York quintet, marking the 25th anniversary of their game-changing debut Is This It. Julian Casablancas & co. haven’t quite hit the heights of their exhilarating early records over the past decade or so – and have only released three albums since 2005. But perhaps they can regain some of that old garage-rock spark by revisiting their classic record. They usually only come together when they have proper plans, so expect their Coachella appearance to be backed up with a full tour.
Interpol ready a new album
Where The Strokes’ career has become increasingly hit and miss, their New York buddies Interpol have just got better and better. In between anniversary tours for their era-defining early records Turn On The Bright Lights and Antics, they continue to put out dynamic, epic indie-rock albums that push their sound forward and are bigger than they’ve ever been – during the campaign for their last album The Other Side Of Make-Believe, they played to a crowd of 160,000 people in Mexico. There have been rumblings of a new album from the trio, so there’s a good chance it’ll be out by the time they rock up at Coachella.
The xx will be back in a big way
The members of minimalist indie trio The xx have been busy on solo projects since their last band action in 2018 but their presence high up the bill at Coachella is a sign they are getting back to the group in which they made their name. There is no way that Romy Madley-Croft, Oliver Sim and Jamie xx are doing Coachella and not announcing a raft of UK shows to follow in the summer, most probably with the arrival of a long-awaited fourth album too.
The Chats will cause carnage
Bar a few standalone dates and festival appearances in 2025, raucous Aussie punks The Chats, whose count Dave Grohl, Yungblud and Josh Homme as fans, have been uncharacteristically quiet over the past year or so and haven’t released a record since 2022’s Get Fucked. But frontman Eamon Sandwith claimed last year they were making a third album, which you imagine would mean it should arrive in time to coincide with a trademark chaotic performance in California.
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