The band that dragged heaviness toward dream-pop: Chino Moreno's croon-to-scream over guitars tuned for atmosphere as much as impact.
Alt-metalShoegaze-metal
Sick New World Texas 2026 Lineup
One Saturday, one speedway, and the whole nu-metal and industrial canon in a row, with a current hardcore undercard and a darkwave strand running through the day.
Sick New World Texas is expected back October 2027 (dates aren't announced yet). Until then, here's the full 2026 lineup and the acts you would have loved.
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About Sick New World Texas 2026
Sick New World's Texas edition is a single Saturday at Texas Motor Speedway, and it is unusually well-designed for one day: fifty acts covering essentially the entire late-90s and 2000s heavy canon, plus a genuinely modern hardcore undercard. System of a Down and Deftones headline. Slayer play a 40 Years of Reign in Blood set. Evanescence, Ministry, Marilyn Manson, Mastodon and Melvins fill the tier beneath.
What separates it from a straightforward nostalgia bill is the bottom half. Sunami, Speed, Knocked Loose, Pain of Truth and Dying Wish are the current hardcore mainstream, and Boy Harsher, Twin Tribes and She Wants Revenge give the day a genuine darkwave strand. No day splits to worry about. It's all one Saturday, so the only real planning problem is stage clashes.
Expect alt-metal, metalcore, nu-metal and hardcore across 50 acts.
At a glance
- Dates
- Saturday
- Where
- Texas Motor Speedway, Fort Worth, TX
- Lineup
- 50 acts
- Website
- Official site
Sick New World Texas 2026 lineup & schedule: all 50 acts
Search it, filter by day, stage or genre.Browse all 50 acts
Search it, filter by day, stage or genre.
Armenian-American art-metal that never stopped sounding unhinged, with lurching time signatures, Serj Tankian's operatic yelp, and hooks that shouldn't work but do.
Alt-metalArt-metal
Late-'90s funk-metal cut short by tragedy, hyperactive and punk-fast, and still fondly guarded by everyone who caught them the first time.
Nu-metalFunk-metal
'90s space-rock that everyone else spent decades catching up to, heavy in texture rather than tempo, with 'Fantastic Planet' the cult document.
Space-rockAlt-rock
Synth-forward nu-metal in vinyl trousers. The New Order cover was the hit, but the originals leaned genuinely cold and chrome-plated.
Industrial-rockNu-metal
Best known for turning 'Smooth Criminal' into an alt-metal hit, which undersells a Riverside band with a real ear for a chorus and more melodic instinct than their era usually rewarded.
Alt-metalAlt-rock
'Hey Man Nice Shot' is the hit, and Richard Patrick's industrial-rock sneer is intact, with machine-tooled riffs from NIN's family tree.
Industrial-rockAlt-rock
'Alive' and 'Youth of the Nation' are the calling cards of San Diego's nu-metal survivors, whose positivity stayed intact through every scene cycle.
Nu-metalRap-metal
Teenage Ontario nu-metal that hardened into a genuinely heavy career. Morgan Lander's growl was never a novelty, and the comeback proved it.
Alt-metalGroove-metal
Crossover thrash that hardcore kids and metalheads agreed on, with riffs that have a pit already built into them and Riley Gale's legacy carried loud.
Crossover-thrash
Belgian acid-house provocateurs who are filthy, funny, and built entirely for a room past midnight, with '90s industrial-dance sleaze still fully operational.
Acid-houseIndustrial-dance
Atlanta's prog-sludge institution, with concept records about doom and grief, played with genuinely uncommon musicianship and harmonized howls.
Prog-metalSludge-metal
Chaotic Southern metalcore: dissonant, lurching, and famously punishing to watch from the front, two decades of controlled collapse.
MetalcoreMathcore
Border-town darkwave with reverbed baritone, chorused bass, and an unusually devoted following: Brownsville goth gone international.
DarkwaveGoth
Hardcore kids who became goths and then a genuinely huge rock band, with Davey Havok's full-commitment melodrama riding a catalog that runs from East Bay punk to 'Miss Murder'-era anthems.
Post-hardcoreGoth-punk
Sydney hardcore that went global fast, with brotherhood-forward lyrics and riffs built entirely for the pile-on, and community as the whole point.
Hardcore
Spooky-kid nu-metal with detuned bounce and a goth streak the genre mostly abandoned, bringing 'Loco'-era heaviness back from the grave.
Nu-metal
Forty years of deliberately difficult, punishingly slow riffs, and the band Nirvana learned from, still outweirding everyone downstream.
Sludge-metalNoise-rock
Kentucky hardcore built on the meanest two-step riffs going, with Bryan Garris's shriek cutting clean over the top: heaviness that crossed over without softening.
HardcoreMetalcore
Thick, downtuned '90s worship that a whole generation found late and adopted wholesale, 'Youngest Daughter' the unlikely viral hymn.
GrungeAlt-rock
Deadpan Valley post-punk that wore its Joy Division debt openly and got a genuinely great single out of it. 'Tear You Apart' endures.
Post-punkDarkwave
Two decades of straight-ahead hardcore with no ornament whatsoever: pure mosh utility, 'Keepers of the Faith' as literal job description.
Hardcore
Riff-and-groove lifers, with Neil Fallon hollering tall tales over the most reliably heavy live band in American rock, three decades without phoning one in.
Stoner-rockHard-rock
The 1990s' designated national panic: glam-industrial theatre staged with genuine pop instincts underneath, 'The Beautiful People' still a siren.
Industrial-metalShock-rock
Black metal's tremolo blur pointed at shoegaze bliss: screamed vocals over passages that keep resolving into something radiant, 'Sunbather' still the genre-argument that never ends.
BlackgazePost-metal
NOLA sludge supergroup with Phil Anselmo fronting molasses-slow riffs built for a room with no air conditioning, swamp-heavy doom from scene royalty.
Sludge-metalSouthern-metal
Bay Area beatdown that turned meme-level swagger into a genuinely feared live act, and the joke stopped being a joke fast.
HardcoreBeatdown
Amy Lee's piano-and-orchestra gothic metal is the sound of a whole 2000s radio format built around one voice, and 'Bring Me to Life' is still an event live.
Gothic-metalAlt-metal
Al Jourgensen's industrial-metal war machine, with sampled sermons, mechanised riffing, and four decades of pure spite, still grinding forward.
Industrial-metal
Post-hardcore's great withholders, with Daryl Palumbo's serrated delivery over grooves that lurch sideways, and records doled out a decade apart.
Post-hardcore
Jae Matthews and Augustus Muller making darkwave that feels like a film score for something you shouldn't watch, with throbbing synths, whispered menace, and fog everywhere.
DarkwaveMinimal-synth
'They're Only Chasing Safety' to now, metalcore's restless innovators, reinventing loudly in every era, and the reinventions keep landing.
Post-hardcoreMetalcore
Thrash's most pitiless institution, with tritones, air-raid solos, and a rhythm section that never once let up, 'Raining Blood' as closing rite.
Thrash-metal
Clean-chorus metalcore engineered for the big room, with breakdowns placed exactly where you want them. Ocala precision, radio ambition.
Metalcore
Florida metalcore that kept mutating, with each record noticeably stranger and more textured than the last, a blueprint for the genre's art wing.
MetalcorePost-hardcore
Firestarters, still. The UK's rave-punk institution hits harder than bands half their age, three decades of menace intact.
Big-beatElectronic-punk
Speed of Light
The Nashville project of Kentucky-born singer Addison, whose voice jumps from low growls to piercing screams to clean melody over deathcore weight, first heard in clips filmed in her car.
Deathcore
Dead City
Solo alt-metal built from bedroom production upward, with nu-metal bounce and a genuinely modern pop ear, at the front of the scene's internet-native new wave.
Alt-metalNu-metal
The Dark
Metal
A joke name attached to genuinely punishing mathcore, with time signatures as a form of assault, reunited for the brave.
MathcoreDeathgrind
Emma Boster fronting metalcore that leans hard into late-'90s heaviness with none of the nostalgia: Portland fury built for the modern pit.
Metalcore
Brazilian alt-rock with a rotating-instrument gimmick that turns out to be a real band underneath: everyone plays everything, arena-sized either way.
Alt-rockHard-rock
TSS
RockMetalcore
Long Island heavy hardcore with a lineage running straight back to the NYHC canon: new-school stomp, old-school allegiance.
HardcoreBeatdown
Nu-metal revivalism from a newer solo act, leaning on the genre's bounce rather than its irony, and self-made and rising.
Nu-metalAlt-metal
Slam played with a hip-hop swagger: gurgles, gore, and breakdowns tuned to the floor, the internet's favorite new heaviness.
Slam-metalDeathcore
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
New-generation alt-metal built on a soulful clean vocal and a very modern low end, and the format's next arena act in waiting.
Alt-metalPost-grunge
The headliners
System of a Down · Armenian-American art-metal that never stopped sounding unhinged, with lurching time signatures, Serj Tankian's operatic yelp, and hooks that shouldn't work but do. One of very few festival appearances they play in any given year.
Deftones · The band that dragged heaviness toward dream-pop: Chino Moreno's croon-to-scream over guitars tuned for atmosphere as much as impact. Co-headlining, and the band whose influence is audible across half this bill.
Up-and-comers to catch early
Sunami · Bay Area beatdown that has become one of hardcore's biggest live draws.
Speed · Sydney hardcore that went global in about eighteen months.
Amira Elfeky · Solo nu-metal revivalism with a real pop ear underneath.
Sleep Theory · Memphis alt-metal rising fast on the modern rock format.
PeelingFlesh · Slam with a hip-hop swagger: the most extreme thing on the bill.
Violent Vira · Newer nu-metal solo act leaning into the genre's bounce.
Other acts worth planning around
Slayer · Performing a 40 Years of Reign in Blood set.
The Prodigy · The outlier booking, and likely the most physical set of the day.
Glassjaw · Rare live outing from post-hardcore's great withholders.
Knocked Loose · The heaviest band on the bill with genuine crossover pull.
Boy Harsher · Anchors the darkwave strand running quietly through the day.
The lineup by day
Saturday lineup (October 24)
System of a Down, Deftones, Slayer, Evanescence, Ministry, AFI + 44 more
Saturday set times (50 sets)
- Speed of Light · Blue Stage
- Showing Teeth · Spiral Stage
- Dead City · Diablo Stage
- Amira Elfeky · Gold Stage
- The Dark · Diablo Stage
- Snot · Spiral Stage
- Failure · Blue Stage
- The Tony Danza Tapdance Extravaganza · Diablo Stage
- Orgy · Spiral Stage
- Dying Wish · Gold Stage
- Ego Kill Talent · Diablo Stage
- Alien Ant Farm · Spiral Stage
- TSS · Diablo Stage
- Filter · Blue Stage
- Pain of Truth · Diablo Stage
- Violent Vira · Spiral Stage
- P.O.D. · Gold Stage
- PeelingFlesh · Diablo Stage
- Kittie · Spiral Stage
- Power Trip · Blue Stage
- Haywire · Diablo Stage
- Lords of Acid · Spiral Stage
- Mastodon · Gold Stage
- Norma Jean · Diablo Stage
- Twin Tribes · Spiral Stage
- AFI · Blue Stage
- Speed · Diablo Stage
- Coal Chamber · Spiral Stage
- Sleep Theory · Diablo Stage
- Melvins · Spiral Stage
- Knocked Loose · Gold Stage
- Superheaven · Diablo Stage
- She Wants Revenge · Spiral Stage
- Terror · Diablo Stage
- Clutch · Spiral Stage
- Marilyn Manson · Blue Stage
- Deafheaven · Diablo Stage
- Down · Spiral Stage
- Sunami · Diablo Stage
- Evanescence · Gold Stage
- Ministry · Spiral Stage
- Glassjaw · Diablo Stage
- Boy Harsher · Spiral Stage
- Underoath · Diablo Stage
- Slayer · Blue Stage
- Wage War · Diablo Stage
- Deftones · Gold Stage
- Poison the Well · Diablo Stage
- The Prodigy · Spiral Stage
- System of a Down · Blue Stage
Sick New World Texas 2026 lineup FAQ
When is Sick New World Texas 2026?
Saturday, October 24, 2026, a single day.
Where is it held?
Texas Motor Speedway in Fort Worth, Texas.
Who is headlining?
System of a Down and Deftones, with Slayer and Evanescence beneath them.
How many acts are playing?
50 acts across one day.
Is this the same as Sick New World in Las Vegas?
No. This is the Texas edition, with its own separate lineup.
How do I work out which acts I'd like?
Type a few bands you already love into the search at the top of this page and you'll get ranked matches from this lineup, with reasons.
When is Sick New World Texas 2027?
Sick New World Texas is expected back in October 2027; the festival has not announced the 2027 dates yet. The 2026 lineup stays on this page until it does.
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