Photo-Illustration: Vulture; Photos: Getty Images
Coachella 2026 was not lacking in major pop-culture moments, whether it was Justin Bieber’s YouTube session, Kacey Musgraves’s surprise set, or Madonna joining Sabrina Carpenter onstage. But outside the major pop stars and Grammy favorites, there was a legion of potential breakout stars jockeying for audience attention and winning it. For an aspiring superstar, America’s biggest music festival can be a launching pad to hit the big time — look what a killer performance in 2024 did for Chappell Roan, when her performance of “Good Luck, Babe!” went viral and she was suddenly everywhere. Below, find our picks for Coachella 2026’s biggest breakout stars who just might find themselves singing our next song of the summer.
A few years back, 20-year-old South London singer-songwriter Joyce Cissé was a teen-pop prodigy who poured the unplanned solitude of 2020 into music, releasing a trickle of yearning, versatile tunes (like the crunchy “Fat Wave”) as flowerovlove. She played after one of the dueling Black Flag reunion groups on Coachella’s Gobi stage, making the most of the unusual lead-in with a half-hour display of sharp wit and songwriting chops. On a stage dressed up like a lovestruck teenager’s bedroom, between-song banter was chipper and personable, just as inviting as the hooks in the giddy ’80s pop update “Boys” and pop-rock confections like “In My Victoria Secret.” That mirth could melt on a dime: The confrontational “ARE YOU SERIOUS?” and the cocky “I’ve Seen Ur Ex” — “I know I’m your first baddie” — said flowerovlove is young but not to be toyed with. Closing the first weekend with “Breaking News,” a swooning ode to nursing a discombobulating crush, flowerovlove brought out Bini to strum air guitars.— Craig Jenkins
How does Oklou translate to a festival stage? It turns out … well! Listening to the 2025 breakout artist’s songs with headphones on feels internal, like listening to your own thoughts. At Coachella, the French singer brought her songs into the real world with panache. She sang more forcefully than usual, giving the desert audience a bit more to grab on and dance to. All the Bushwick and Echo Park residents screamed when she brought out a fellow alt-pop phenom, Underscores, to surprise them. Oklou looked like Y2K’s vision of a future pop star, wearing loose gray pants with a flannel tied around her waist and a sweatshirt that was draped so that it looked like it was constantly falling off. Matching the “thrown together” feel of her costume, she was deliberately casual with her body language. Despite her very chic crowd, Oklou seemed like the coolest girl in the room. — Jason P. Frank
It took too long for a band to realize that noise rock can be fierce. Model/Actriz, the hard-core band fronted by Cole Haden, is on a mission to make mosh pit slay. One of the most electric live performers we have, Haden strutted around the Coachella stage like a prideful vampire, dragging a languid cape behind him. Haden, one of the few gay people in hard-core music (and certainly the most fabulous one), has found the intersection between punk and pride. Model/Actriz’s songs reference Lady Gaga in one moment, then emit a primal scream the next. On tracks like “Cinderella” — their standout track about Haden growing up with internalized homophobia — the slaying takes on a political valence, protesting years of heterosexual boredom in both the genre and the world. With popped hips and a bevel, Hader dared the rock-friendly audience to either judge him or join him in the gay revelry. — J.P.F.
Looking a bit like Kesha if she were born in Missouri instead of Los Angeles (that’s a compliment), Slayyyter came to Coachella to make the stage her bitch. The pop singer has been bubbling up in recent years, but her new album WOR$T GIRL IN AMERICA is her best yet. With the wind on her back, she arrived at Coachella with something to prove, and she did it. She wore a fashion-ratty shirt and a pair of jean shorts with a pack of cigarettes poking out of the back pocket, and trashy never looked so good. “Crank,” her standout track, was a bracing moment of messy, dirty pop perfection. When she got her audience to chant, “She pick up, then we fuck, I get so gay off that tequila / I need some dick for Tuesday, lеt me go put out some feelers,” it was a bit like seeing the divine. Most of all, the overwhelming sense for those watching from home was intense FOMO. Slayyyter is a movement, and her performance makes you want to get off the couch and join the scream. — J.P.F.
As international girl groups go, the Friday-night Katseye set with a KPop Demon Hunters collaboration was the talk of the festival, but earlier that day there was a delightful performance from the Filipino octet Bini, who also formed on a reality TV show for prospective idols. Bini, referred to affectionately in the Philippines as the “nation’s girl group,” made a mark as the first act from the country to play Coachella and brought bubbly energy and aqueous dance-pop grooves to the Mojave tent. Joyful renditions of gems like “Cherry on Top” and “Pantropiko” melded tropical themes and breezy melodies to involved choreography; the group’s blue and gold outfits were bathed in red light, gesturing to the colors of the flag of the Philippines until (in week two) it appeared onscreen behind them during the latter jam. Binichella made jubilant, effervescent history, opening doors for future Stateside P-pop representation. — C.J.
Dressed in a breathy white dress, Holly Humberstone strolled around a stage that was set up to look like a wooded fairyland. Luckily, she’s got the ethereal voice to match. The indie-pop singer — a peer of pop-rocker Samia and a bit less jazzy than Clairo — has been an online favorite for a long time. Her strongest songs, like “The Walls Are Way Too Thin,” demonstrate a bright voice that skims over the top of sturdy melodies. At Coachella, that voice was clear as day on songs off her recent album Cruel World, like “To Love Somebody.” The standout performance was the album’s title track, which she lilted over with the self-assured ease of somebody who knows her way around a festival stage. — J.P.F.
Playing after Alex G might not be ideal real estate for an indie-rock act in a festival space, but this was immaterial to 28-year-old rocker Blondshell, an L.A.-by-way-of-Manhattan auteur restoring the feeling of downcast mid-’90s alternative rock one somber chord progression and exhalation at a time. A Saturday Outdoor Theatre set balanced gems from the singer-songwriter born Sabrina Teitelbaum’s 2023 self-titled and last year’s acclaimed If You Asked for a Picture. In Indio, the scathing but indecisive would-be breakup anthem “Olympus” simmered, and the elegant “Kiss City” drew parallels to ’90s slow-core and British sophistipop. Fans of Lana Del Rey, Mazzy Star, PJ Harvey, Boygenius, and/or any of the music played in a Twin Peaks episode need to get in there immediately. —C.J.
A good grip of rage rap is chasing its tail nowadays, coolly batting around a time-tested formula of shouting, impish post–Playboi Carti hooks whose words are nearly obscured by the encroaching hiss and saturation of speaker-rattling beats. Rage and hyperpop savant Jane Remover doesn’t hide the hooks; the noise is a tool for opening a vein, the better to send a melody shooting straight into your bloodstream. On the Sonora stage Sunday, the 22-year-old Newark rapper-producer who arrived at the current screaming catharsis via a circuit of molting SoundCloud-era microgenres was at once dangerously commanding and euphoric while tearing through highlights from last year’s Revengeseekerz. The exhausted club anthem “Dancing With Your Eyes Closed” hinged on an almost violent house beat; a guttural “Open up the fucking pit!” in the raucous “Music Baby” was a rare reminder at a festival considerably less friendly to heavy music now than in its 2000s Tool era that music ruder and angrier than indie rock still exists.—C.J.
