Genre-agnostic arena duo (rap, ukulele, and existential dread) with a devoted Clique and lore deep enough for a wiki.
Alt-popRock
Riot Fest 2026 Lineup
Chicago's punk-rock family reunion, 21 years in: legends, reunions, and carnival rides in Douglass Park.
Riot Fest 2026 has already wrapped, but you can still dig through the lineup and find the acts you would have loved.
Find the acts you'll love at Riot Fest
Name a few bands you love and we'll scout all 106 acts on the Riot Fest bill for the ones you shouldn't miss.
About Riot Fest 2026
Riot Fest is Chicago's punk-rock family reunion, 21 years in: three September days in Douglass Park where legends, reunions, full-album sets, and carnival rides coexist like it's the most natural thing in the world. The 2026 bill is peak Riot Fest chaos theory: Tool's lasers and Morrissey's melancholy on the same weekend as Twenty One Pilots, Alanis Morissette, and Pierce The Veil, with an undercard that runs from Iggy Pop and Patti Smith to GWAR's fake blood and Insane Clown Posse's Faygo showers. Nowhere else does a lineup treat punk history (and punk absurdity) with this much affection.
Expect punk, emo, rock and pop-punk across 106 acts.
At a glance
- Dates
- –Friday to Sunday, three days
- Where
- Douglass Park, Chicago, IL
- Lineup
- 106 acts
- Website
- Official site
Riot Fest 2026 lineup & schedule: all 106 acts
Search it, filter by day, stage or genre.Browse all 106 acts
Search it, filter by day, stage or genre.
The Smiths' voice, complicated as ever: when he shows, nothing else sounds like it, and the songbook remains untouchable.
IndieRock
Prog-metal's cathedral builders: polyrhythms, lasers, and total audience surrender, with Danny Carey's drumming alone worth the pilgrimage.
Prog-metal
Jagged Little Pill at festival scale: the '90s' most cathartic songbook, still sung full-throated by everyone in the field.
Pop
San Diego post-hardcore romantics enjoying a massive TikTok-era second act, the scene's most swooned-over comeback.
Post-hardcoreAlt-rock
Chicago's heart-skull institution, offering graveyard romance in three chords, with Matt Skiba and Dan Andriano trading morbid valentines across two-plus decades of dark pop-punk.
PunkDark pop-punk
Genre-collapsing alt-pop pioneer, from 'L.E.S. Artistes' to now, always ahead, with new wave and dancehall in one voice.
Alt-popNew wave
'Gives You Hell' and a wildly fun second act: the internet's favorite reunion, with Tyson Ritter in full chaos-uncle mode.
Pop-punkPop-rock
The original scandal, touring with Frank Carter up front: anarchy, museum edition, still louder than you, and Frank makes it feral again.
Punk
Chicago's melodic-hardcore conscience, with two decades of fists-up anthems delivered with undimmed conviction, 'Savior' still closing rooms.
Melodic hardcorePunk
Loud-quiet-loud's inventors, the band your favorite band ripped off, with 'Debaser' through 'Where Is My Mind?' still setting the terms.
Alt-rock
The godfather, shirtless as ever. Punk exists because of this man, and the Stooges songbook still hits like a dare.
PunkProto-punk
Conor Oberst's trembling opus is the confessional songbook of a generation, from basement-tape quiver to orchestral sprawl and back.
Indie folk
Bob Mould's post-Hüsker Dü trio, with melodies buried under an absolutely enormous wall of guitar, and 'Copper Blue' still ringing.
Alt-rockPower pop
Milo goes to Riot Fest. The caffeinated blueprint for all pop-punk, still fast, still nerdy, still out-hooking the generations they invented.
Pop-punkPunk
Mike Ness's Orange County punk band, forty years deep in rockabilly-tinged songs about bad decisions, with tattooed survival as an art form.
PunkRoots-punk
Forty-plus years of polysyllabic melodic punk, with three-part harmonies over an unwavering political line, still the genre's reigning intellectuals.
PunkMelodic-hardcore
Illmatic. That's it, that's the blurb. QB's finest in career-renaissance form, with a late-era run most rappers would kill for as a peak.
Hip-hop
Nate Ruess before fun. Horn-flecked, sincere power-pop that reunion crowds have waited fifteen years to hear, and sing accordingly.
Indie-popPower-pop
Punk's poet laureate, whose 'Horses' remains a sacrament, and every performance still reads as testimony, rock's great living poet at work.
Punk poetryRock
Long Island emo royalty: mic-swinging catharsis, twenty-plus years deep, 'MakeDamnSure' still a communal throat-shred, and yes, the mic still swings.
EmoAlt-rock
The angry young man of '77, now the canon itself, pump it up one more time, with a songbook that runs from spite to Bacharach.
New waveRock
The Faygo flies at sundown: whoop whoop, and genuinely one of music's strangest, most loyal communities gathered in one place.
HorrorcoreRap-rock
Cork's melodica-toting indie romantics, Fontaines-adjacent and rising fast, with a windswept, literary streak all their own.
Rock
Almost There But Not Really
Alternative
Gauzy new-school shoegaze riding the revival's crest, with Phoenix pedals-and-whisper bliss aimed at the genre's dreamiest register.
Shoegaze
Cardiff's funniest, fiercest punks bring group-chat energy with riffs, in-jokes sharpened into anthems, the funniest serious band in Wales.
Punk
DC duo making a genuinely enormous racket for two people: fuzz, sludge, and swagger in the Death From Above tradition.
Garage-punkNoise-rock
Self-made silk: Detroit R&B auteur with a devoted following, self-released and sounding more expensive than most majors.
alt-R&B
Mexican emo-rock pioneers with border-town anthems for a generation that learned to scream along in Spanish first.
Rock en españolEmo
Flint doom-gaze with crushing sadness, gorgeous guitars, and slowcore patience that makes the loud parts land like verdicts.
SlowcoreShoegaze
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
Vein.fm side project gone huge, with grunge-gaze heaviness for the new generation and Deftones worship refracted through hardcore muscle.
Shoegaze-metal
Yes, Dave's daughter, and a genuinely arresting voice striking her own path, closer to torch song than stadium rock.
Alt-rockSinger-songwriter
Melbourne post-punks: wiry, literate, buzzing, in the great Australian art-school tradition, sharp songs delivered with nervous energy.
Alternative
Jazz-schooled grunge with sludgy riffs, sly writing, and solos that betray the conservatory training, with the guitar work doing the heavy lifting.
GrungeBlues-rock
The Bronx's punk band in full mariachi regalia, a bit that became a genuinely accomplished second career, now several albums deep.
MariachiPunk-adjacent
DONTTRUSTME and the rest of the MySpace-era catalog, played fully self-aware, with neon electro-rap chaos that has aged into a gleeful, shout-along riot live.
Electro-popCrunkcore
Trip-hop's shadow king, with the whispered menace of 'Maxinquaye' live and Bristol paranoia thickened by three decades.
Trip-hop
Chicago bedroom alt-rock, growing fast, with moody hooks and a DIY spine, a bedroom project outgrowing the bedroom.
Alt-rock
The Paradox
Atlanta pop-punk band with an early 2000s sound, whose single 'Get the Message' reached number one on Billboard's Alternative Airplay chart.
Pop/rock
Riot grrrl founders, reunited, where 'Pottymouth' still snarls and the sarcastic, minimal punk that helped launch a movement remains gleefully intact.
Riot grrrlPunk
Queens punk with a morbid streak and lead guitar lines that owe more to metal than emo, a craftsmanship that turned a scene band into a twenty-year institution.
PunkEmo
Descendents and ALL's guitarist out front for once, with solo records where punk's best-loved voices line up to sing his songs, downstrokes as precise as ever.
PunkPop-punk
Snotty SoCal punk provocation, decades deep, deliberately tasteless, weirdly tuneful, and proud of every complaint letter.
Punk
Beastie Boys energy for the TikTok era: relentless, giddy, all-caps fun, two friends rapping like the '80s never ended.
RapPunk-rap
Moog-powered anxiety anthems, where 'Commit This to Memory' remains scripture and 'Everything Is Alright' remains a group confession.
Pop-punkPower pop
Atlanta mathcore chaos with a violin, brilliant, exhausting, unmissable, a band juggling chainsaws and mostly catching them.
Mathcore
The Ruler, rap's greatest storyteller, eyepatch and all, with 'Children's Story' still the masterclass every MC studies.
Hip-hop
Gothic pop with metallic edges: theatrical dark-pop vocals over production that keeps one boot in the metal scene.
Dark pop
Cincinnati glam maniacs with Freddie Mercury theatrics and backflips, playing piano-stomping rock 'n' roll like a dare.
Glam rock
Intergalactic latex monsters spraying fake blood on the front rows since 1984, with thrash chops under the costumes. Wear a poncho.
Shock metal
Aim High
Punk
Wry Toronto jangle: Pavement's grandkids with better jokes, deadpan verses stuffed with sly detail, slacker charm with a novelist's eye.
Indie rockJangle
Whispers
Metal
Montreal's swaggering party-punk force: riff-first, cowbell-friendly, and built to blow the roof off. One of the weekend's most kinetic sets.
PunkRock
ASAVA
Rock
Richmond punk with an activist heart and huge, communal choruses (new-ish but already a natural Fest fit), solidarity as setlist.
Punk
New York hardcore built around a banjo run through a wall of distortion, genuinely unlike anything else and heavier than it has any right to be.
HardcoreNoise-punk
Richmond melodic hardcore with raised fists and open hearts: protest-punk conviction that never aged into cynicism.
Melodic hardcore
Wry Leeds post-punk gone disco: talk-sung satire you can dance to, Britain narrated mid-groove, grooves with a permanent smirk.
Post-punkArt-rock
Tokyo's hyperspeed noise legends deliver 30 years of joyful sensory assault, with laser-gun guitars and chirped vocals at impossible tempos.
Noise rockGrindcore
J. Robbins's angular post-hardcore, reunited, with Dischord DNA all over it, wiry riffs and odd meters from one of the DC scene's sharpest writers.
Post-hardcore
Australian pub-punk perfection: smoko forever, mullets and minute-long anthems about life's essentials, the nation's finest short-song economists.
Pub punk
Detroit ska-core lifers: fast, political, joyful, and still the best argument that those three go together.
Ska-corePunk
Gaslight Anthem's voice in troubadour mode, with Jersey heart, whiskey throat, and heartland songcraft that trades the amps for storytelling without losing the ache.
Heartland rockPunk-adjacent
Masked Saguenay duo who loop double-necked microtonal guitar into hypnotic, odd-metred math rock, 2026's strangest breakout story.
Math rockExperimentalProg-rock
Early-2000s emo cult favorites, back on the boards, bringing Vagrant-era warmth for everyone who kept the CDs.
Emo
Sacramento punk fury, sharpened into one of the scene's best live bands, with snarling hooks and pit control well beyond their years.
Punk
Horns up! Gainesville ska-punk party engineers since '92, confetti cannons and crowd games as standard equipment.
Ska-punk
Dublin's next post-punk export, snarling and kinetic, riding the same wave that carried Fontaines out of the city.
Post-punk
Post-hardcore's elder statesmen, heavy, literate, endlessly evolving, and never once coasting on the back catalog.
Post-hardcoreAlt-rock
John Lydon's second act is the band that invented post-punk's rulebook by burning the first one, still gleefully contrary.
Post-punk
Toronto's chaos-pop-punk stars (self-lacerating lyrics, unhinged energy, choruses built to be screamed back until throats give out). As big a name as this fest books.
Punk
LA psych-punk perpetual motion machine with relentless krautrock grooves and fuzz freakouts that never let the tempo sag.
Psych rockGarage
VANA
Auckland artist welding big pop choruses to heavy metal riffs, with a dark, theatrical edge she frames as her own 'darkcore' sound.
Metal
Immigrant-punk cabaret with accordion, fiddle, and total mayhem, Eugene Hütz conducting the tent like a ringmaster on his third espresso.
Gypsy punk
Oklahoma's nightmare-noise auteurs write grinding, harrowing songs about American rot, critically adored precisely because they refuse any comfort.
Noise rockSludge
Because he got high. The one-song folk hero whose loose, self-deprecating stoner-rap turned a novelty smash into a quarter-century touring career.
Hip-hopComedy rap
Largemouth
Scrappy Philly indie-punk with bite and heart, bringing yelped hooks and basement-show devotion, plus scrappy precision honed over years of touring.
Indie punk
Rose of Demise
Metalcore
Stomach Book
Alternative
Twinkly Long Island emo sweetness with soft-spoken hooks and math-lite guitars that hug rather than punch.
EmoIndie
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
Theater-kid pop-punk menace, self-branded 'bubble-grunge' with a wink, with Brooklyn duo energy engineered for glitter and mosh in equal parts.
Pop-punk
NYHC party priests since '82, with Jimmy G leading hardcore's longest-running good time and circle pits with a smile since day one.
Hardcore
Fifth-wave emo at its most frantic, with tapped riffs and throat-shredding payoffs in equal measure, from a band that treats catharsis as a competitive sport.
Emo
Welsh post-hardcore romantics with soaring, heart-first heaviness, every chorus written to be wept through, Cardiff sincerity at full wingspan.
Post-hardcoreAlternative rock
Seattle art-punk cult heroes, reunited, jagged and beautiful, with dance-punk urgency that a generation of bands studied.
Post-punkIndie
Chicago's rawest-throated punk songwriter, in a hometown hero slot for songs that turn anxiety into gang vocals.
PunkEmo
Boston hardcore named for the city's 617 area code and fronted by Austin Sparkman, carrying the local pit-first tradition from a 2024 debut on DAZE to a 2026 album on Roadrunner.
Hardcore
Michigan midwest-emo risers, 'always cloudy' and ascendant, offering twinkle-and-shout catharsis for the new wave, the next names in the scene's group chat.
Emo
Ontario emo revival with a knack for the exact line that lands hardest, plus huge choruses, harder feelings, and a scene-beloved catalog that punches far above its weight.
Emo
'90s emo cult favorites, reunited for the faithful, with bittersweet boy-girl vocals from the genre's tender first wave.
EmoIndie
Auckland's harmony-stacked power-pop treasures, with jazz-school chops, huge hearts, and 'Expert in a Dying Field' as proof of mastery.
Indie rockPower pop
Atlanta pop-punk lifers whose 'Chroma' still hits like 2005, a front-to-back scene classic that never needed a follow-up to justify the devotion.
Pop-punkPower-pop
SF punk with gravel and melody, where Fat Wreck-lineage songwriting pairs busted-romantic lyrics with East Bay drive.
Punk
Nate Amos writing straightforwardly beautiful songs after years of deliberately difficult ones, the other half of Water From Your Eyes, unmasked.
IndieAlt-country-pop
Hermosa Beach skate-punk institution, and 'Bro Hymn' will level the park, as it has for thirty years.
PunkSkate punk
Fifth-wave emo standard-bearers with twinkly riffs, food-pun titles, real feelings, and crowds that scream every self-deprecating word.
EmoPop-punk
Toronto punks who grew out of ska into gravel-throated, big-hearted melodic punk. A modern Fest cornerstone with a knack for the last-song-of-the-night singalong.
Punk
Yes, that William Shatner: deadpan spoken-word delivery over a full rock band, and the 'Common People' bit keeps turning out weirdly moving.
Spoken wordRock
Santa Cruz melodic hardcore with Fat Wreck loyalty since '95, delivering political fire at skate-video velocity.
Melodic hardcore
Chicago garage-rock loyalty (loose, warm, hometown-beloved), with Grateful Dead ease at garage-band volume, the city's easiest hang.
Garage rock
Texas pop-punk comedians with better songwriting chops than the joke suggests, and twenty-five years of hooks hiding under the punchlines.
Pop-punkComedy rock
The headliners
Twenty One Pilots · Genre-agnostic arena duo (rap, ukulele, and existential dread) with a devoted Clique and lore deep enough for a wiki.
Tool · Prog-metal's cathedral builders: polyrhythms, lasers, and total audience surrender, with Danny Carey's drumming alone worth the pilgrimage.
Morrissey · The Smiths' voice, complicated as ever: when he shows, nothing else sounds like it, and the songbook remains untouchable.
Pierce The Veil · San Diego post-hardcore romantics enjoying a massive TikTok-era second act, the scene's most swooned-over comeback.
Alanis Morissette · Jagged Little Pill at festival scale: the '90s' most cathartic songbook, still sung full-throated by everyone in the field.
Up-and-comers to catch early
Fleshwater · Vein.fm side project gone huge: grunge-gaze heaviness for the new generation.
Glixen · Gauzy new-school shoegaze riding the revival's crest.
Panic Shack · Cardiff's funniest, fiercest punks: group-chat energy with riffs.
Teen Mortgage · DC duo: surfy garage-punk with debt-generation bite.
Joey Valence & Brae · Beastie Boys energy for the TikTok era: relentless, giddy, all-caps fun.
Violet Grohl · Yes, Dave's daughter, and a genuinely arresting voice striking her own path.
Other acts worth planning around
Iggy Pop · The godfather, shirtless as ever: punk exists because of this man.
Patti Smith · Punk's poet laureate: Horses remains a sacrament.
Sex Pistols · The original scandal, touring with Frank Carter up front: anarchy, museum edition.
Sugar · Bob Mould's post-Hüsker power trio, reunited: Copper Blue front to back, if we're lucky.
The Format · Nate Ruess's beloved pre-fun. band, reunited: Dog Problems, live at last.
Bratmobile · Riot grrrl founders, reunited. Pottymouth still snarls.
GWAR · Intergalactic latex monsters spraying fake blood on the front rows since 1984. Wear a poncho.
Descendents · Playing 'Everything Sucks' front to back. Thirty years on, still faster than everyone.
The Suicide Machines · 'Destruction by Definition' in full: Detroit ska-core's 1996 opening shot, complete.
PUP · 'The Dream Is Over' front to back: the album that broke them, played like it's still at stake.
Taking Back Sunday · 'Louder Now' in full: 'MakeDamnSure' guaranteed, mic swings included.
William Shatner & The *uckers · A late add and peak Riot Fest booking: Captain Kirk doing spoken-word rock covers on the Rebel Stage.
The lineup by day
Friday lineup (September 18)
Twenty One Pilots, Iggy Pop, Rise Against, Pixies, Alkaline Trio, The All-American Rejects + 31 more
Friday set times (37 sets)
- Cardinals · Riot Stage
- Glixen · Rebel Stage
- Almost There But Not Really · Radical Stage
- Teen Mortgage · Roots Stage
- Panic Shack · Rise Stage
- JMSN · Riot Stage
- División Minúscula · Rebel Stage
- Greet Death · Radical Stage
- Soul Glo · Rise Stage
- Fleshwater · Roots Stage
- Violet Grohl · Riot Stage
- Radio Free Alice · Rebel Stage
- Slothrust · Radical Stage
- Mariachi El Bronx · Rise Stage
- 3OH!3 · Roots Stage
- Tricky · Rebel Stage
- Worry Club · Radical Stage
- The Paradox · Riot Stage
- Bratmobile · Rise Stage
- Bayside · Roots Stage
- Stephen Egerton · Radical Stage
- Joey Valence & Brae · Riot Stage
- Guttermouth · Rise Stage
- Motion City Soundtrack · Rebel Stage
- Alkaline Trio · Roots Stage
- The Callous Daoboys · Radical Stage
- Slick Rick · Rise Stage
- Santigold · Rebel Stage
- DeathbyRomy · Radical Stage
- The All-American Rejects · Riot Stage
- Sex Pistols · Rise Stage
- Foxy Shazam · Radical Stage
- Rise Against · Roots Stage
- Pixies · Rebel Stage
- Twenty One Pilots · Riot Stage
- Iggy Pop · Rise Stage
- GWAR · Radical Stage
Saturday lineup (September 19)
Tool, Morrissey, Social Distortion, Nas, Bad Religion, Sugar + 29 more
Saturday set times (35 sets)
- Kiwi jr. · Roots Stage
- Whispers · Rise Stage
- Aim High · Radical Stage
- NOBRO · Rebel Stage
- ASAVA · Riot Stage
- The Iron Roses · Radical Stage
- Yard Act · Roots Stage
- Strike Anywhere · Rebel Stage
- Show Me The Body · Rise Stage
- Melt-Banana · Riot Stage
- Burning Airlines · Radical Stage
- The Chats · Rebel Stage
- The Suicide Machines · Rise Stage
- Brian Fallon & The Painkillers · Roots Stage
- Angine de Poitrine · Riot Stage
- Hot Rod Circuit · Radical Stage
- Destroy Boys · Rebel Stage
- Bright Eyes · Roots Stage
- Less Than Jake · Rise Stage
- Gurriers · Radical Stage
- Thrice · Rebel Stage
- Public Image Ltd. · Riot Stage
- PUP · Rise Stage
- Frankie and the Witch Fingers · Radical Stage
- Sugar · Roots Stage
- Descendents · Rebel Stage
- VANA · Radical Stage
- Social Distortion · Riot Stage
- Gogol Bordello · Rise Stage
- Chat Pile · Radical Stage
- Morrissey · Roots Stage
- Bad Religion · Rebel Stage
- Afroman · Radical Stage
- Tool · Riot Stage
- Nas · Rise Stage
Sunday lineup (September 20)
Pierce The Veil, Alanis Morissette, Elvis Costello & The Imposters, The Format, Patti Smith, Taking Back Sunday + 28 more
Sunday set times (34 sets)
- Largemouth · Rebel Stage
- Remember Sports · Roots Stage
- Rose of Demise · Radical Stage
- Stomach Book · Riot Stage
- Macseal · Rise Stage
- Algernon Cadwallader · Rebel Stage
- Daisy Grenade · Roots Stage
- Murphy's Law · Radical Stage
- Holding Absence · Riot Stage
- Ben Quad · Rise Stage
- Pretty Girls Make Graves · Rebel Stage
- Sincere Engineer · Roots Stage
- Haywire · Radical Stage
- Saturdays At Your Place · Rise Stage
- Arm's Length · Riot Stage
- Jejune · Rebel Stage
- The Beths · Roots Stage
- Cartel · Rise Stage
- Dead To Me · Radical Stage
- This Is Lorelei · Rebel Stage
- Pennywise · Riot Stage
- Mom Jeans · Rise Stage
- The Flatliners · Radical Stage
- The Format · Roots Stage
- William Shatner & The *uckers · Rebel Stage
- Patti Smith · Rise Stage
- Taking Back Sunday · Riot Stage
- Good Riddance · Radical Stage
- Twin Peaks · Rebel Stage
- Alanis Morissette · Roots Stage
- Bowling For Soup · Radical Stage
- Pierce The Veil · Riot Stage
- Elvis Costello & The Imposters · Rise Stage
- Insane Clown Posse · Radical Stage
Riot Fest 2026 lineup FAQ
When is Riot Fest 2026?
September 18–20, 2026 (Friday through Sunday).
Where does Riot Fest take place?
Douglass Park, on Chicago's West Side.
Who is headlining Riot Fest 2026?
Twenty One Pilots, Tool, Morrissey, Alanis Morissette, and Pierce The Veil.
How many acts are playing Riot Fest 2026?
106 acts across three days, plus the carnival rides.
What time do specific acts play?
Set times are live. Every act's day, stage, and set time is on this page. Expand the full lineup below or check the day-by-day breakdown.
How do I figure out which of the 106 acts I'd actually like?
Tell the finder at the top of this page a few bands you love. It'll match you with your must-see sets, with reasons why.
When is Riot Fest 2027?
Riot Fest 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.
Festivals like Riot Fest
More festivals
Festivals in September 2026Music festivals in IllinoisMore Punk festivalsMore Indie festivalsMore Alternative festivalsFull festival calendar