Concept-album maximalists who treated emo as opera, with marching-band drums, guitar harmonies, and a costume for every era, theatrical to the last note.
EmoAlternative rockPost-hardcore
Sonic Temple 2026 Lineup
Four days of rock and metal on five stages at Columbus's Historic Crew Stadium: Tool, My Chemical Romance and Shinedown over a bill that ran deep into death metal and metalcore.
Sonic Temple 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 Sonic Temple
Name a few bands you love and we'll scout all 145 acts on the Sonic Temple bill for the ones you shouldn't miss.
About Sonic Temple 2026
Sonic Temple took over Historic Crew Stadium in Columbus for four days in May, running 145 acts across five stages. My Chemical Romance opened Thursday, Shinedown took Friday, Bring Me the Horizon had Saturday, and Tool closed it out on Sunday.
What makes Sonic Temple worth a whole weekend rather than a headliner ticket is the stage split. The Temple and Cathedral stages carried the arena-rock and emo-reunion bill: All Time Low, Coheed and Cambria, The Used, Rise Against, Breaking Benjamin, an L.S. Dunes set and a Flyleaf reunion with Lacey Sturm. Meanwhile the Altar Stage ran an almost entirely separate extreme-metal festival: Behemoth, Cradle of Filth, Napalm Death, Dying Fetus, Cattle Decapitation, Suffocation and Fleshgod Apocalypse, all on the same ticket.
The Citadel and Sanctuary stages were where the current generation lived: Slaughter to Prevail, Whitechapel, 200 Stab Wounds and Carnifex on one, Dayseeker, Holding Absence, Magnolia Park and Catch Your Breath on the other. It is one of the few bills in the US where a deathcore fan and someone who came for the 2005 emo revival both get a full weekend.
Expect metal, hard rock, post-hardcore and rock across 145 acts.
At a glance
- Dates
- –Thursday to Sunday, four days
- Where
- Historic Crew Stadium, Columbus, OH
- Lineup
- 145 acts
- Website
- Official site
Sonic Temple 2026 lineup & schedule: all 145 acts
Search it, filter by day, stage or genre.Browse all 145 acts
Search it, filter by day, stage or genre.
Brent Smith's enormous voice fronting two decades of rock-radio anthems, delivered with genuine showmanship rather than autopilot, 'Simple Man' cover included.
Hard rockPost-grunge
Sheffield shape-shifters who went from feral deathcore to arena-sized electronic metalcore, with one of heavy music's most elaborate stage shows.
MetalcoreAlternative metal
Prog-metal's cathedral builders: polyrhythms, lasers, and total audience surrender, with Danny Carey's drumming alone worth the pilgrimage.
Progressive metalAlternative metal
Maryland pop-punk heroes with two decades of fast, funny, chorus-first anthems, and 'Dear Maria' hits different in home waters.
Pop punkAlternative rock
Polish blackened death metal staged like liturgy, with corpse paint, fire, and riffs with genuine architectural heft, led by Nergal's decades-long war on the sacred.
Blackened death metalBlack metal
Pennsylvania's reliably heavy melodic rock: brooding verses, enormous choruses, and a catalogue that never chased a trend because the formula never stopped working.
Hard rockPost-grunge
Sci-fi concept-rock saga with arena hooks: 'Welcome Home' indeed, the Amory Wars mythology powering some of modern prog's biggest singalongs.
Progressive rockPost-hardcore
Rory Rodriguez's falsetto turned a metalcore band into something closer to devastating synth-pop with guitars, with grief-heavy songwriting that broke the scene's mold.
Post-hardcoreAlternative rock
Memphis hard-rock outfit out of the late-2000s active-rock wave, with blunt riffs and hooks built for radio rotation.
Rock
Mid-2000s alternative metal defined by Lacey Sturm's voice (fragile and full-throated, often inside the same line), with 'All Around Me' still the payoff.
Alternative metalHard rock
Chris Jericho's rock band, long past the novelty stage and into a genuinely solid hard-rock catalogue, with wrestling charisma applied to riffs.
Hard rockHeavy metal
Ohio emo survivors whose mid-2000s records are still the reference point for the whole scream-over-the-chorus template, played now with veterans' gratitude.
EmoPost-hardcore
A supergroup of MCR, Thursday, and Circa Survive members, playing urgent, veteran post-hardcore like a first band, not a side project.
Post-hardcoreAlternative rock
San Diego post-hardcore romantics enjoying a massive TikTok-era second act, the scene's most swooned-over comeback.
Post-hardcoreEmo
Chicago's melodic-hardcore conscience, with two decades of fists-up anthems delivered with undimmed conviction, 'Savior' still closing rooms.
Melodic hardcorePunk rock
Alex Terrible's subterranean roar over deathcore built like siege machinery, as much spectacle as band, and heavier than both.
Deathcore
Jacksonville post-hardcore whose one inescapable single has kept the whole catalogue in rotation for two decades, and 'Face Down' still hits its mark.
Post-hardcoreEmo
Bert McCracken's scream-to-croon whiplash defined a corner of early-2000s post-hardcore and still detonates live, and the chaos has aged into craft.
Post-hardcoreEmo
Los Angeles hard rock built on Josh Todd's rasp and unreconstructed sleaze-rock riffing, a late-nineties holdout still trading in the same swagger.
Hard rock
Illinois band led by the Loeffler brothers, three decades deep in heavy, tightly coiled alt-metal, with 'The Red' and 'Send the Pain Below' still doing the work.
Hard rock
Chris Daughtry's band, which turned a talent-show runner-up finish into one of the more durable American rock careers of its era, with big-chorus post-grunge built for arenas.
Rock
'Santa Monica' and Art Alexakis's survivor's-eye alt-rock: hard-luck autobiography set to some of the '90s' stickiest guitar hooks.
Alt-rock
Lzzy Hale's Grammy-winning powerhouse, the loudest voice in modern hard rock, delivered nightly with full-throttle sincerity.
Hard rockHeavy metal
Oklahoma City post-grunge outfit whose 'Lips of an Angel' became inescapable in the mid-2000s, with two decades of hard rock built around outsized radio hooks.
Hard rock
'My Own Worst Enemy' is one perfect song and a very good time, delivered by SoCal pros who know exactly why you came.
Alt-rock
New Jersey deathcore act whose blackened, orchestral extremity broke out of the underground once Will Ramos took the mic, with vocal contortion as spectacle.
Metal
The pop-punk band other pop-punk bands cite, with three decades of unreasonably durable hooks and a work ethic to match.
Pop-punk
Montreal pop-punk that took the genre fully mainstream and has never pretended otherwise, with 'I'm Just a Kid' now two generations deep.
Pop
Aaron Lewis-fronted Massachusetts band whose heavy, confessional post-grunge dominated late-'90s and 2000s rock radio, now reunited and playing loud again.
Hard rock
Grunge-era hitmakers with a glam streak their peers were too earnest to attempt: 'Plush' through 'Interstate Love Song', hooks for days.
GrungeAlt-rock
Sun-bleached ska-punk-dub hybrid, now carried by Bradley Nowell's son with the songs left intact, and '40oz. to Freedom' forever.
Ska-punkReggae rock
Violin-powered pop-punk: 'Ocean Avenue' at the actual ocean, and the violin still carries the hooks.
Pop-punk
Zakk Wylde playing Sabbath songs with reverence and absurd volume, a tribute act with a guitar hero attached, pinch harmonics included.
Doom metalHard rock
New England metalcore that leaned into melody early and got a career of radio singles out of it, trading screams for choruses at exactly the right moment.
Metal
Mark Tremonti's riffs and Myles Kennedy's range built into two decades of arena-scale hard rock, from a post-Creed project that long outgrew that framing.
Hard rock
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.
Rock
Brighton metalcore institution that rebuilt itself after the loss of founding drummer and chief songwriter Tom Searle, trading pit-focused aggression for something vast and cleanly engineered without losing the weight.
Metal
Warpaint-and-leather anthems: the black parade's glammer cousins, with stadium-goth choruses delivered with total conviction and eyeliner-era devotion still marching.
Glam metalcore
Ice-T's crossover thrash outfit, formed in Los Angeles with guitarist Ernie C at the end of the 80s, delivering rap-honed political fury at hardcore speed and still showing no interest in softening it.
Metal
Gavin Rossdale's post-grunge outfit, whose mid-'90s singles have aged into genuine festival-crowd catnip, as 'Glycerine' and 'Machinehead' still land like it's 1995.
Rock
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
Maryland pop-punk built around twins Joel and Benji Madden, whose early-2000s run of radio singles defined the era's mall-punk sound.
Alternative
The 1990s' designated national panic: glam-industrial theatre staged with genuine pop instincts underneath, 'The Beautiful People' still a siren.
Hard rock
Horror-movie theatrics welded to industrial-tinged metalcore, with corpse paint, synths, and choruses built for an arena singalong, Halloween as a year-round genre.
Gothic metalcoreIndustrial metal
Three brothers making self-described fashion-art rock, with glam theatrics wrapped around garage riffs, and one of the most devoted young fanbases in rock.
Rock
Michigan hard rock outfit fronted by Leigh Kakaty, two decades deep in riff-first radio anthems and relentless touring.
Hard rock
Moody, bass-heavy alt-metal that trades breakdowns for slow-building dread and falsetto, with 'FEEL NOTHING' the crossover moment.
Post-hardcoreAlt-metal
Modern pop-punk standard-bearers, gruff, fast, and beloved, with Walnut Creek's chip-on-shoulder anthems in full stride, pits and singalongs in equal measure.
Pop-punk
Sweden's Viking metal institution, with melodic death metal, longship stage sets and choruses a whole field roars back.
Metal
Swedish band who wrap groove-heavy, melodeath-rooted metal in full theatrical costume and greasepaint, fronted by Johannes Eckerström's ringmaster showmanship.
Metal
Zakk Wylde's biker-metal brotherhood has pinch harmonics for days, Sabbath-weight riffs, and guitar solos treated as main events.
Heavy metal
Swancore's funk-flecked flagship (technicolor riffs and dual-vocal whiplash) with a prolific catalog that never stopped mutating.
SwancorePost-hardcore
Seattle outfit founded by the Clark brothers, alternating crushing groove with big melodic choruses, with faith-driven heaviness and a designer's eye for its own iconography.
Hard rock
Metalocalypse's cartoon death-metal band, real and devastating live, with Brendon Small's shred played against the animation at brutal volume.
Melodic death metal
German trancecore turned full variety act, with day-glo costumes, absurd videos, and breakdowns that genuinely hit, the internet's favorite metal party band.
Metal
Sully Erna's New England hard rock institution, built on percussion-heavy grooves and drum duels, with arena-scale riffs since the late '90s.
Hard rock
Gothenburg institution who helped write the melodic death metal template in the early nineties, then spent decades restlessly pulling it toward melody, electronics and stadium-sized choruses.
Metal
Richmond, Virginia's groove-metal institution, fronted by Randy Blythe's bark, with riffs built for the kind of pit that clears a field.
Metal
Mustaine's farewell campaign: thrash's most venomous catalog, one last ride through 'Peace Sells' and four decades of grudges.
Thrash metal
'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-metalReggae-rock
Chuck D's baritone over air-raid production, protest music that has never needed updating, with Flavor Flav as eternal hype engine.
Political hip-hop
Memphis band from the nu-metal boom whose riff-and-hook formula outlasted the trend that produced it, with three decades of rap-inflected hard rock.
Hard rock
Venice crossover legends with 'Institutionalized' and a pit that never ages, and Cyco Mike still leading the charge.
Crossover thrash
Cleveland's contribution to the new-school death-metal revival: filthy, mid-paced, and built entirely around the riff, with the kind of grooves that turn a pit violent in seconds.
Death metal
Party-deathcore built for the pit: Chris Fronzak's bark, gleefully profane anthems, and absolutely no interest in anyone's approval.
DeathcoreMetalcore
Florida beatdown with no interest in subtlety, where grief and rage are compressed into two-minute assaults, as heavy emotionally as it is sonically.
DeathcoreBeatdown hardcore
Blackened deathcore with a genuine sense of atmosphere under all the tremolo and blastbeats, where grim, symphonic weight outlasts the genre's shock tactics.
DeathcoreBlackened deathcore
Texas metalcore with a big melodic centre, the kind of band that grows a stage size every touring cycle.
MetalcorePost-hardcore
Misanthropic eco-horror deathgrind, with Travis Ryan's clean-shriek hybrid doing something no other vocalist quite manages and apocalyptic themes played at extinction speed.
DeathgrindDeath metal
Gothic-horror black metal with orchestration, shrieks, and a theatrical streak a mile wide: extreme metal's most committed haunted-house act.
Extreme metalGothic metal
Symphonic-leaning blackened deathcore assembled with orchestral bombast and technical density, with extremity arranged like a film score.
Metal
Maryland death metal built on impossible riffs and a groove that sneaks up under all the brutality, with three-piece precision at full slam.
Death metalGrindcore
Italian death metal with a full orchestral apparatus and an operatic streak played completely straight: tuxedos, corpse paint, and blastbeats in formalwear.
Symphonic death metalTechnical death metal
Welsh post-hardcore romantics with soaring, heart-first heaviness, every chorus written to be wept through, Cardiff sincerity at full wingspan.
Post-hardcoreAlternative rock
Orlando pop-punk that pulls freely from hip-hop and hyperpop and refuses to pick a lane, with genre loyalty traded for pure momentum.
Pop punkAlternative
The band that essentially invented grindcore, still politically ferocious and still capable of a song shorter than this sentence, and Birmingham's loudest export.
GrindcoreDeath metal
Melodic death metal about goblins, performed with a technical seriousness that makes the joke land harder, and a dancing goblin mascot is included.
Melodic death metalFolk metal
Nerv
Rock
New York death metal originators, and the band most responsible for the breakdown as a technical device rather than a gimmick.
Death metalTechnical death metal
The Pretty Wild
Las Vegas sisters Jyl and Jules Wylde, who graduated from casino cover sets to theatrical metalcore laced with dark pop hooks.
MetalcoreDark pop
Knoxville deathcore that grew genuinely melodic without losing any of the weight underneath, with Phil Bozeman's range now the band's superpower.
DeathcoreDeath metal
Wind Walkers
Alternative
Melbourne metalcore with a heavy pop instinct, pairing electronic sheen and clean hooks against breakdowns.
Metal
As You Were
Pop
OC metalcore originators bring 'Lip Gloss and Black' nostalgia with new-era polish, from a band that helped write the genre's melodic playbook in the first place.
Metalcore
Clean-and-scream metalcore from the Rise Records boom, played with more muscle than nostalgia by Phoenix scene veterans who kept the choruses enormous.
MetalcorePost-hardcore
Toronto deathcore built on cinematic orchestration and manga-inspired imagery, with pitch-shifted vocals and breakdowns arranged like a boss battle.
Death metal/black metal
Utah deathcore that keeps finding new floors beneath the floor, a decade-plus of low-tuned punishment that only got nastier with time.
Deathcore
Edsel Dope's industrial nu-metal outfit, hardened on the late-'90s package-tour circuit, with sneering electronics and a cover of 'You Spin Me Round' that outlasted its moment.
Hard rock
Louisville band from the early-2000s nu-metal wave, still working the same mix of downtuned churn and confessional vocal hooks.
Rock
Japanese visual kei group active since 2013, welding digitally processed heaviness to full theatrical presentation, with costume and choreography played entirely straight.
Pop
Texas hardcore at its most punishing, with mosh calls that carry a message and a low end that treats subtlety as a character flaw.
HardcoreMetalcore
Left On Red
Rock
Cleveland masked-metal institution predating most of the nu-metal wave, with painted faces, dual vocalists and a rotating cast held together for decades.
Rock
Not Enough Space
Metal
Swiss beatdown with a genuinely unsettling vocal performance sitting on top of the chug, and Europe's heaviest recent export.
DeathcoreBeatdown
Spider One's long-running industrial metal outfit, built on sci-fi B-movie imagery and pneumatic riffs, with 'When Worlds Collide' still detonating three decades on.
Hard rock
Lajon Witherspoon's soul-trained voice over grinding alt-metal is the reason they outlasted the scene, and they have the warmest crowd in heavy music.
Alt-metalNu-metal
American deathcore at its most relentless, with downtuned slams and guttural low end delivered with enough precision to keep the brutality legible.
Metal
Late-nineties American heavy rock act that came up through the post-grunge and alt-metal churn and never softened the riffs.
Hard rock
Los Angeles industrial-metal machine behind the 'evil disco' churn of Wayne Static's era, carrying the catalogue forward with the surviving lineup and a masked frontman.
Metal
St. Louis screamo-adjacent survivors of the early-2000s emo boom, still built around gang vocals, acrobatic stage energy and 'Until the Day I Die.'
Rock
Phoenix metalcore fronted by Telle Smith, alternating clean choruses with breakdowns and drifting toward electronics as the years pass.
Rock
Atlanta post-hardcore act from the early-2010s scene wave, built on traded clean and screamed vocals over electronic-tinged breakdowns.
Rock
Swedish outfit formed in Örebro at the start of the 2020s, welding djent-adjacent rhythmic precision to metalcore's melodic instincts, technical without turning bloodless.
Metal
Melbourne heavyweights central to metalcore's nu-metal turn, with detuned bounce, panic chords and vocals that swing between screamed and spat.
Metal
Pennsylvania metalcore mainstays two decades deep, built on Matt Greiner's restless drumming and riffs that refuse to sit still, which adds up to precision at pit volume.
Metal
Brooklyn crew who fused hardcore aggression with hip-hop cadence long before that was a formula, with street-level heaviness and the accent left in.
Metal
Los Angeles band built on duelling front-women trading screams and clean hooks, with a shock-rock streak inherited from the Plasmatics.
Metal
Liverpool extremists who began in grindcore squalor and ended up writing some of the sharpest melodic riffs death metal has produced, and decades on they are still gleefully clinical.
Metal
Grunge-weight emo that has quietly drifted toward something looser and poppier without losing the murk: Toledo's finest, still evolving album over album.
Alternative
Alabama metalcore turned mean, with melodic roots swapped for something nu-metal-adjacent, and the heaviness pays for the trade.
Metal
Chicago-area group who came up in the 2010s pop-punk revival, pairing scrappy melodic hooks with a rawer emo streak than most of their peers.
Rock
Mille Petrozza's Essen institution, a cornerstone of German thrash since the early '80s and still sharpening the same blade four decades on.
Metal
Perth deathcore act that has folded symphonic keyboards and clean vocals into its brutality since 2009, using melody as pressure, not relief.
Metal
Warped Tour survivors trading in the specific ache of a song you loved at sixteen, and 'Miserable at Best' still empties the tear ducts.
Pop-punkEmo
Moog-powered anxiety anthems, where 'Commit This to Memory' remains scripture and 'Everything Is Alright' remains a group confession.
Pop-punkPower pop
French progressive metalcore founded by brothers Amael and Florestan Durand, intricate guitar work and atmosphere carried since 2023 by singer Camille Contreras.
Progressive metalcore
Brazil's metal export to the world: Roots-era tribal thrash that reshaped heavy music's map.
MetalThrash
Late-'90s funk-metal cut short by tragedy, hyperactive and punk-fast, and still fondly guarded by everyone who caught them the first time.
Hard rock
Albany pop-punk built on Derek DiScanio's sugar-rush hooks and guitar work tight enough to survive the breakdowns, with a decade-plus in the genre's second wave.
Rock
Queensland metalcore veterans two decades deep, alternating screamed verses with huge clean choruses, and heavy music that never hides its emotional stakes.
Metal
A band whose survival story is inseparable from the music's insistence on pushing forward, with melodic hardcore as literal testament.
MetalcoreMelodic hardcore
Pop-punk that grew up in public, with suburban specifics rendered in novelistic detail and Dan Campbell narrating adulthood in real time.
Pop-punkEmo
Californian post-hardcore mainstays of the late-2000s scene, built on Michael Jagmin's high clean vocals cutting against screams and keyboard flourishes.
Rock
Scottish crew who turned pirate metal from a joke into a career with keytar shanties, folk-metal riffing and drinking songs delivered with total commitment.
Metal
Anberlin with Stephen Christian
Classically trained Finnish cellists who started by covering Metallica and never stopped headbanging, making symphonic metal where the strings genuinely shred.
Cello metalSymphonic metal
Indian nu-metal with dhol and flute in the front of the mix, and anti-hate lyrics over some of the heaviest grooves going.
Metal
Brooklyn doom theater with Sabbath-lineage riffs, delivered by a costumed cast with the Rat Queen out front.
Metal
Craig Owens's theatrical post-hardcore, reunited: MySpace-era drama with real stakes, piano flourishes and that unmistakable swooping vocal intact.
Post-hardcoreScreamo
Conquer Divide
Rock
Dez Fafara's post-Coal Chamber outfit, grinding groove metal under a bark of a vocal, with two decades of relentless touring behind it.
Metal
British power metal at absurd velocity, where twin-guitar solos are treated as an extreme sport, delivered with a knowing grin that never undercuts the musicianship.
Metal
Mid-2000s Colorado post-hardcore band who ran synths and electronics through screamo at the peak of that scene, and who are back on stages after years of silence.
Rock
Mid-2000s screamo whose most famous alumnus left to become a dubstep producer, with 'Dear Diary' drama that still hits the scene's pleasure centers.
Post-hardcoreScreamo
Sydney metalcore built on intricate, melodic riff architecture and hard clean-to-scream swings, with precision-tooled heaviness and real emotional weight.
Metal
New Jersey post-hardcore that got angrier and more political as it aged, not softer, with Buddy Nielsen leading with total candor.
Post-hardcoreEmo
Stu Folsom's Las Vegas project welding thrash riffs to metallic hardcore, wrapped in outlaw-Western imagery and desert dread rather than the usual genre furniture.
Metal
Melbourne five-piece who traded straight metalcore for something sleeker and more atmospheric, with riffs built around croon-to-scream dynamics.
Metal
Post-hardcore's elder statesmen, heavy, literate, endlessly evolving, and never once coasting on the back catalog.
Post-hardcoreAlt-rock
Swedish hardcore channelling panic-attack lyricism into riffs that feel physically claustrophobic: short songs, total impact.
HardcoreNu-metalcore
Melodic metalcore that leans hard on the clean-sung hook, carrying a decade-plus of hard-won catharsis and brotherhood themes made literal.
MetalcorePost-hardcore
Italian power metal built around dwarven mythology and marching, hammer-swinging choruses, with folk melody welded to symphonic heft.
Metal
The headliners
My Chemical Romance · Concept-album maximalists who treated emo as opera, with marching-band drums, guitar harmonies, and a costume for every era, theatrical to the last note. Opened Thursday, one of three Danny Wimmer festivals they headlined in 2026.
Shinedown · Brent Smith's enormous voice fronting two decades of rock-radio anthems, delivered with genuine showmanship rather than autopilot, 'Simple Man' cover included.
Bring Me the Horizon · Sheffield shape-shifters who went from feral deathcore to arena-sized electronic metalcore, with one of heavy music's most elaborate stage shows.
Tool · Prog-metal's cathedral builders: polyrhythms, lasers, and total audience surrender, with Danny Carey's drumming alone worth the pilgrimage. Closed the festival with odd time signatures, twenty-minute arcs, and a strict no-phones visual show.
Up-and-comers to catch early
200 Stab Wounds · Cleveland's contribution to the death-metal revival: filthy, mid-paced, built entirely around the riff.
Dayseeker · Rory Rodriguez's falsetto turned a metalcore band into something closer to devastating synth-pop with guitars.
Holding Absence · Welsh post-hardcore aiming squarely at catharsis: soaring, sincere, allergic to irony.
Catch Your Breath · Texas metalcore with a big melodic centre; the kind of band that grows a stage size every cycle.
Bodysnatcher · Florida beatdown-deathcore with a genuinely nasty low end and nothing resembling a melody.
Magnolia Park · Orlando pop-punk pulling freely from hip-hop and hyperpop, refusing to pick a lane.
Other acts worth planning around
Behemoth · Blackened death metal staged like liturgy, and the anchor of an unusually serious Altar Stage.
Napalm Death · The band that essentially invented grindcore, still politically ferocious four decades on.
L.S. Dunes · The supergroup that turned out to be a real band: Thursday, Circa Survive, Coheed and MCR members writing new material.
- Flyleaf with Lacey Sturm · A reunion set with the original vocalist, billed as such on the poster.
Coheed and Cambria · Decades of sci-fi concept records in Claudio Sanchez's unmistakable upper register.
The lineup by day
Thursday May 14 through Sunday May 17, with all five stages running each day.
Thursday lineup (May 14)
My Chemical Romance, Pierce the Veil, All Time Low, Coheed and Cambria, L.S. Dunes, Hawthorne Heights + 30 more
Friday lineup (May 15)
Shinedown, Staind, Halestorm, Stone Temple Pilots, Daughtry, Hinder + 31 more
Saturday lineup (May 16)
Bring Me the Horizon, Good Charlotte, Motionless in White, Black Veil Brides, The Plot in You, Palaye Royale + 30 more
Sunday lineup (May 17)
Tool, Godsmack, Lamb of God, Black Label Society, Avatar, P.O.D. + 30 more
Sonic Temple 2026 lineup FAQ
Who headlined Sonic Temple 2026?
My Chemical Romance headlined Thursday, Shinedown Friday, Bring Me the Horizon Saturday, and Tool closed the festival on Sunday.
When and where was Sonic Temple 2026?
May 14–17, 2026, at Historic Crew Stadium in Columbus, Ohio.
How many bands played Sonic Temple 2026?
145 acts across five stages: Temple, Cathedral, Citadel, Sanctuary and Altar.
Is Sonic Temple a metal festival or a rock festival?
Both, and they are deliberately kept somewhat separate. The Temple and Cathedral stages leaned hard rock, emo and post-hardcore; the Altar Stage ran death metal, black metal and grindcore almost as its own event.
Is Sonic Temple related to Louder Than Life and Welcome to Rockville?
Yes. All three are Danny Wimmer Presents festivals, which is why the headliners and much of the undercard rotate between them across a single year.
When is Sonic Temple 2027?
Sonic Temple is expected back in May 2027; the festival has not announced the 2027 dates yet. The 2026 lineup stays on this page until it does.
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