Self-described "western space grunge" with heavy alt-rock riffs colliding with red-dirt country swagger, breaking out off the viral hit Sad in Carolina.
Alt-rockCountry-grunge
Name a few bands you love and we'll scout all 102 acts on the Hopscotch bill for the ones you shouldn't miss.
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Hopscotch has been Raleigh's music-obsessive holiday since 2010: three September nights where downtown becomes a walkable festival, with one big outdoor stage at City Plaza and six clubs, from the Lincoln Theatre down to Slim's, running sets deep past midnight. Moore Square, the second main stage in past years, goes free and daytime this time with a slate of Triangle acts. The afternoons belong to the day parties: more than thirty free shows from Wednesday through Sunday in breweries, record stores, and the same bars, no wristband needed. The local scene turns out in force for them, and by Saturday the whole downtown is running on festival time.
The lineup is classic Hopscotch, 102 acts where the top of the bill is only half the story. Headliners bring the funk, pop, and alt-rock firepower, but the festival's soul is in the club shows: avant-garde legends, cumbia pioneers, screamo upstarts, and half the North Carolina underground sharing the same three blocks. If your favorite festival memory is stumbling into a life-changing set by a band you'd never heard of at 1 a.m., this is your weekend.
Expect indie rock, hip-hop, post-punk and funk across 102 acts.
Search it, filter by day, stage or genre.
Self-described "western space grunge" with heavy alt-rock riffs colliding with red-dirt country swagger, breaking out off the viral hit Sad in Carolina.
Alt-rockCountry-grunge
The rhythm-guitar machine of Vulfpeck fame, with relentlessly upbeat, impossibly tight funk, a horn-powered live band, and a clinic's worth of right-hand technique.
FunkJazz-funk
Swaggering queer pop-rock auteur with torch-song vocals, glam guitar, and arena-sized hooks about messy love, and '1950' is still the calling card.
Pop-rockIndie pop
Grammy-winning Miami bassist for Pitbull and Lauryn Hill fronting his own band, with country twang filtered through Caribbean roots and island-funk muscle.
Country-soulFunkCaribbean roots
Hazy, hypnotic psych-folk turned scrappy indie rock, with languid fingerpicking that boils over into loose-limbed guitar jams: Nashville cool with no Nashville gloss.
Psych-folkIndie rock
Dual-frontwoman indie rock that lovingly resurrects '90s alternative, with big fuzzy hooks, deadpan cool, and twin guitar harmonies built for radio that no longer exists.
Indie rock90s alt revival
Tuareg guitarist and songwriter from Agadez, Niger, playing hypnotic desert blues with fast, fiery lead lines that owe as much to rock as to the Sahel.
Tuareg guitarDesert blues
French-American duo making tropical space-age pop with retro-futurist synths, bossa rhythms, and candy-colored melodies, a lounge on a space station.
Space-age popIndie pop
Philly's ferocious hardcore standard-bearers, with blistering screamo velocity spliced with hip-hop and biting political fury, critical darlings for good reason.
HardcoreScreamoRap-core
Fugazi's rhythm section plus guitar wizard Anthony Pirog, joined by saxophone titan James Brandon Lewis, where post-hardcore muscle meets free-jazz flight.
Instrumental rockJazz-punk
Pro Era producer-turned-rapper with smoky, soulful East Coast beats under unhurried, writerly bars, in the lineage that runs from Dilla to Earl.
Hip-hopBoom-bap
Savannah sludge-psych institution (dual drummers, buzzsaw riffs, and swirling psychedelia) returned from a long hiatus with the heaviness intact.
Sludge metalPsych metal
Wiry garage-punk provocateur with caustic wit, scuzzy riffs, and restless reinvention from record to record, never the same band twice.
Garage rockPunk
Richmond's garage-jazz five-piece fusing '70s fusion, boom-bap, and P-funk into a loose, heavy groove, with a rhythm section that could back anyone and chooses to lead.
Jazz-funkHip-hop fusion
East LA souldies revivalists who play slow-burning, string-laden Chicano soul straight out of the lowrider-oldies tradition, dedicated to the slow dance.
Chicano soulVintage soul
Genre-fluid alt-rap showman blending funk, punk energy, and silky R&B into one of the most danceable live sets in hip-hop.
Alt hip-hopFunkR&B
Beloved and long-dormant Philly emo pioneers back from reunion with noodly twinkling guitars, yelped vocals, and pure basement-show joy that a whole generation of Midwest-emo revivalists learned from.
EmoMath rock
Nicaraguan-American songwriter whose four-track tape songs drift like intercepted signals, intimate, hiss-wrapped folk experiments with an instant cult following.
Experimental folkLo-fiTape music
Prolific DC rapper-producer whose warm, jazz-laced boom-bap and live band Good Compny make thinking-person's rap groove (craft over hype, always).
Hip-hopSoul-rap
Loud, cathartic fuzz-pop: diaristic verses that detonate into grunge-sized choruses built for shouting along, live-wire energy that made her a word-of-mouth favorite.
Indie rockFuzz-pop
Sasami Ashworth, the classically trained horn player and former Cherry Glazerr synth player, who followed hushed indie rock with an album of nu-metal heaviness and then a turn to widescreen pop.
Alternative
Laid-back Alabama five-piece riding breezy, groove-forward indie rock with sun-baked guitars and easy falsetto hooks, Muscle Shoals-region ease in a new generation.
Indie rockGroove-pop
Diaristic indie rock that pairs '90s alt guitar crunch with unguarded, quietly devastating songwriting: Sophie Allison's ache in high fidelity.
Indie rockBedroom pop
Steve Okonski of Durand Jones & The Indications leads a dusty, late-night soul-jazz piano trio on Colemine Records, with Guaraldi warmth after hours.
Soul-jazzPiano trio
Legendary Peruvian cumbia amazónica band since 1973, with hypnotic surf-guitar jungle grooves that invented a genre and still fill any floor offered.
Cumbia amazónicaPsychedelic cumbia
Brooklyn artist once known as Memo Boy, making surreal, quietly emotional experimental pop that turned vocal on his album Peanut.
Experimental popAmbient
Young Chicago trio channeling '80s and '90s indie, with deadpan harmonies over jangling guitar pop and Sonic Youth homework turned into something their own.
Indie rockPost-punkJangle
Brooklyn collective throwing a cosmic dance party with garage grit, fuzzed-out disco shimmer, and deep-groove psychedelia from a many-limbed live band.
Psych-discoGarage rockFunk

R&B/soul

Rock
Singer/songwriter
Legendary avant-garde banjo and guitar iconoclast with five decades of gleefully deranged country-jazz-noise improvisation, electric rake included.
Avant-gardeFree improvCountry-jazz
North Carolina skramz-gaze: cathartic screamo intensity washed in shoegaze texture, beauty and blast in one breath.
ScreamoSkramzShoegaze
Raleigh DIY lifers channeling their hometown's Superchunk legacy in big-hearted, noisy, punk-tinged indie rock played with scene-elder generosity.
Indie punkPower pop
Charlotte's sprawling art-punk outfit, serving jittery synth-flecked post-punk with barked, absurdist vocals, in the proud lineage of The Fall.
Art-punkPost-punk
Durham synthesist stitching field recordings, tape loops, and analog synths into meditative psychedelic sound collages: headphone music performed patiently in the open air.
ElectroacousticSound collageAmbient
Chapel Hill's psychedelic doom trio, playing crushing, meditative post-metal that swells from drone to avalanche and back again.
DoomPost-metal
Non-hierarchical NC collective where old-time stringband tradition dissolves into DIY noise and drone, with anywhere from two to twelve players.
Experimental folkOld-timeDrone
Ex-Kominas collaborators Sunny Ali and Karna Ray splicing punk's playful cynicism with country's earnest simplicity: deadpan cowpunk with real bite under the twang.
PunkCowpunkCountry
Outer Banks post-punk dream-pop with politically charged atmospherics shot through with garage and progressive fury, coastal isolation turned up loud.
Post-punkDream pop
Chicago Latinx quintet fusing cumbia, salsa, and psych-rock into sweaty, politically charged pan-American grooves that are organ-driven and built for dancing.
Latin psychCumbia
Raleigh's mosh-pit rap general (metal-adjacent, high-adrenaline hip-hop engineered for chaos in small rooms) and a local legend for it.
RapPunk-rap
Asheville trans femme producer of Southern-Gothic dark pop, with industrial percussion, distorted textures, and cinematic intimacy, all self-produced and fearlessly personal.
Dark popAlt-electronic
Raleigh rapper, producer, and designer Dom makes laid-back lifestyle hip-hop where everything is curated for an immaculate, elevated vibe, scene-building included.
Hip-hopLo-fi rap
Verity Susman (Electrelane) and Matthew Simms (Wire) make hypnotic motorik art-rock with woodwinds, synths, and film-score strangeness, pedigree put to genuinely new use.
KrautrockPsychArt-rock
Punchy Atlanta garage-pop with singalong nihilism, clingy guitar hooks, and a swaggering lean into Aussie trash rock, made for sweaty rooms.
Garage rockIndie rockPower pop
Charlotte's luxury-bar underground rapper: unbothered, punchline-dense raps over dusty loops, in the MAVI-and-MIKE school of unhurried excellence.
Hip-hopUnderground rap
LA pianist, poet, and film composer blending jazz training with neo-classical and neo-soul improvisation, meditative, deeply personal, and quietly virtuosic.
Neo-soulNeo-classicalJazz
Durham supergroup of Loamlands, The Muslims, and Setting/Megafaun alumni, playing rowdy, poignant Americana rock in the queerest of ways, scene family on one stage.
Indie americanaQueer country

Alternative
Instrument-swapping Durham noise-rock trio with driving rhythms, angular guitars, and hooks strung tight across the tension, in the proud lineage of amp-worshipping rhythm-section bands.
Noise rockPost-punk
A massed ensemble of North Carolina musicians performs Terry Riley's 1964 minimalist landmark In C, a one-off communal trance.
MinimalismNew music
Charlotte indie rock born from a washed-up-rockstar alter ego, now a full band trading in quiet-loud catharsis, with local mythology made loud.
Indie rock
Argentinian-rooted North Carolina singer weaving jazz, soul, gospel, disco, and Latin folk into empowered, anything-can-happen live shows, a genuine one-of-one on any bill.
Neo-soulLatin jazzFunk

Alternative
Raleigh's veteran hip-hop crew, offering warm, sample-driven North Carolina boom-bap with deep local roots and Little Brother lineage in the DNA.
Hip-hopBoom-bap
Prolific Austin experimentalist blurring ambient, emo, autotune, and pedal steel into tender, disorienting sound worlds, and quietly one of the underground's busiest minds.
AmbientExperimentalPedal steel
Charlotte DIY ferals who play country-tinged balladry that curdles without warning into feedback-worshiping noise, theremin and singing saw included, chaos as craft.
Folk-punkNoiseOutsider rock
Fierce Virginia DIY power trio with psych-rock, '60s power pop, and fuzzed-out metal welded into something uncompromising and loud.
Psych-rockFuzz metalPower pop
Members of Magic Tuber Stringband, Fust, and Weirs playing slacker-rock folk, with the British folk-rock tradition run through the NC DIY scene.
Folk rockSlacker rock
Bass-forward progressive jazz and soul, with virtuosic low end under soulful, socially minded songwriting, in the Thundercat school of lead-instrument bass.
Progressive jazzSoul
Organ-trio supergroup (GA-20, True Loves, Scone Cash Players alumni) cooking greasy, vintage instrumental soul on Colemine, with Meters worship done properly.
Soul-jazzOrgan funk
Riot-grrrl-lineage garage punk out of Durham with fast, funny, furious feminist anthems, loud and economical, that won over Kathleen Hanna herself.
Garage punkRiot grrrl
Guitarist Chris Forsyth's rhythm-forward trio, where drum machines, samplers, and hypnotic guitars lock into boundary-less art-rock trance, Krautrock patience with a jammer's payoff.
Art rockTrance jazzExperimental
Elephant 6-adjacent Athens folk-punk with horn-flecked, big-hearted anthems of queer joy and radical tenderness, community sung into being.
Indie folkFolk-punk
Detroit beat-scene heavyweight with Dilla-lineage production and hard-hitting drums, often backed live by his band Nat Turner for a hip-hop set that swings like a fusion gig.
Hip-hopProducer
Serge Massama Dogo brings Togo's underheard traditions to international stages, with alagaa trance rhythms fused with contemporary African pop and guitar lines that shimmer and circle.
Togolese guitarAlagaaAfrican pop
New Orleans songwriter of bruised, literary alt-country, with gulf-coast grit and quiet devastation in the Berman lineage.
Alt-countrySlowcore
Kitchen-sink punk split between Cincinnati and NYC: erratic, high-powered live shows that ransack every era of punk and hand the pieces back out of order.
PunkGarage punk
A shape-shifting jazz ensemble whose rotating cast of star sidemen makes every set a one-off.
JazzImprov
Raleigh's own knotty indie rock, with trembling, wiry guitars and confessional intensity that snaps from whisper to burst, homegrown and critically adored.
Indie rockPost-punk
Hyper-precise, wiry minimal punk with clean nervous guitars and barked social commentary at maximum tension, like a blueprint drawn in a panic.
Post-punkMinimal punk
Alternative

Alternative

Rock
Athens project splicing '70s jazz fusion, disco, and library-music kitsch with psychedelic electronics, Elephant 6-affiliated and gleefully out of time.
Electronic jazz-fusionDiscoLibrary music
Boone psych-rockers raised on weird riffs and complex harmony, basement-born, self-recorded, and gleefully energetic live, mountain-town psych with real chops.
Psych rock
Freshly minted Berklee quartet improvising at the seam of jazz harmony, live electronics, and modern dance rhythms, with conservatory chops and dancefloor aims.
JazzLive electronicsImprov
Durham trio (Nathan Bowles, Jaime Fennelly, Joe Westerlund) spinning shimmering acoustic-electronic drone, with patient, radiant improvisation that rewards surrender.
AmbientDroneAcoustic ecstatic
Richmond one-man EBM machine: '90s techno, post-punk, and synth-punk hammered into hard-hitting, road-tested live sets, sweat included.
EBMSynth-punkIndustrial techno
Greensboro indie rock led by Lazuli Ortiz and Ryan Mole, fleshed out live by a rotating cast of collaborators, a homegrown fixture of North Carolina's DIY scene.
Indie rock
Johnson City indie pop-rock fronted by Maggie Woodall, with classics-respecting songwriting built for the live room, Tennessee warmth included.
Indie popRock
Songwriter, producer, and filmmaker whose bedroom-born songs veer cinematic and strange, with DIY punk roots refracted through digital experimentation, texture-first and quietly fearless.
Experimental indieArt-pop
Noisy pop-rock led by Nara Avakian, with clever sampling, trip-hop undercurrents, and Y2K production that feels futuristic and nostalgic at once.
Noise popTrip-hopY2K pop
Winston-Salem progressive R&B where gospel, funk, and hip-hop are bent slightly askew; featured on Barack Obama's 2019 year-end playlist, and still climbing.
progressive R&BSoul
Swamp-born freak-rock entity with astonishing technical skill funneled into brain-scrambling psychedelic benders, Primus energy with bayou humidity.
Freak rockPsychProg
Cincinnati indie rock with violin in the frame: warm, Midwestern songs in the lineage of that dog. and The Spinanes.
Indie rock90s indie
Russell Howard's art-rock quartet brings vocoders, synth layers, and new-wave pop that feels beamed in from an alternate universe, played with total conviction.
Art rockNew waveSynth-pop
"Elvis tunes on acid": New Orleans drum-machine rock 'n' roll grown into a breakneck, electrified full band, Suicide's pulse with a Bourbon Street leer.
Electro-punkRock 'n' roll
Widescreen shoegaze with glistening walls of guitar, hushed boy-girl vocals, and melodies that cut through the haze, upstate New York dream-noise on the rise.
ShoegazeDream pop
Roman Norfleet and Brown Calvin's cosmic jazz duo on Mississippi Records, with sax, Rhodes, and percussion shaped by mystic thought.
Cosmic jazzSpiritual jazz
Brooklyn trio of intricate guitars, melismatic vocals, and shapeshifting grooves, "buttery" and "complex" per NPR, with jazz-school chops loosened into something warm and strange.
Indie rockPsych-pop
Tender, atmospheric indie rock built on a credo of close listening, with hushed rhythmic interplay that quiets whole rooms and slowcore patience in the Duster lineage.
Indie rockSlowcore
Beer-soaked NYC synth-punk with gain-cranked, neck-twisting party tunes and sugary earworm hooks buried deep in the scuzz, built for sweaty basement abandon.
Synth-punkGarage punk
Maryam Qudus's tape-warped psych project, with sci-fi synths and spring-loaded pop songs that wobble like old film, studio-scientist craft throughout.
Psych-popSynth
Formerly Miranda and The Beat: Farfisa-fueled garage-punk chaos with howled Telecaster leads and a freight-train rhythm section, sweat guaranteed.
Garage punkGarage soul
Dexter and the Moonrocks, Momma, Liz Cooper, Leo Brooks Band, Chuck Strangers, Kylesa + 27 more
Cory Wong, DUCKWRTH, Thee Sinseers, Butcher Brown, Algernon Cadwallader, Dagmar Zuniga + 27 more
King Princess, Soccer Mommy, WILLIS, Annie DiRusso, SASAMI, Horsegirl + 30 more
September 10–12, 2026 (Thursday through Saturday).
Across downtown Raleigh, NC: an outdoor main stage at City Plaza, six clubs and theaters, and the free Moore Square commons, all within walking distance. The day parties spread out a little further, to breweries and record stores nearby.
Dexter and the Moonrocks, Cory Wong, and King Princess top the 102-act bill.
102 acts across three days, from main-stage headliners to late-night club shows and the free Moore Square Commons stage.
They're out. Hopscotch published the full schedule on August 14, 2026, and every set time on this page comes from it. Save your acts and they become a personal day-by-day schedule.
Tell the finder at the top of this page a few bands you love. It'll match you with the acts on this lineup you shouldn't miss, with reasons why.
Hopscotch is expected back in September 2027; the festival has not announced the 2027 dates yet. The 2026 lineup stays on this page until it does.
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