The 2026 Festival Season in Numbers
Festival season never really ends, but 2026 has a shape: 745 festivals across 50 countries, 43,933 scheduled sets, and the artists who stitch them together. Here is the year in numbers, from the hardest-working acts to the weekends when everything lands at once.
Living report: figures refresh as the season is announced. Last updated September 12, 2026. Check back as the picture fills in.
State of the industry
The festival business is splitting into two speeds. At the top, ownership is consolidating fast: research published in February by the Live DMA and Reset! networks links more than 150 of Europe's largest festivals to just four companies (Live Nation, AEG, CTS Eventim and Superstruct), with Superstruct's roster nearly doubling from 34 to 63 events after KKR's roughly $1.4 billion buyout, a deal that drew artist boycotts at Sonar, Field Day and Lost Village last summer. At the other end, independents are folding: the Association of Independent Festivals counted a record 78 UK closures in 2024 and 43 more through 2025, with 249 UK festivals gone since 2019 and core infrastructure costs up 30 to 50 percent over the same period.
Audiences have changed shape too. Half of young European ticket-buyers now wait until friends commit before buying, around 60 percent of Coachella's general-admission buyers used a payment plan, and regulators have followed the money: the FTC's all-in pricing rule took effect in May 2025, California is legislating face-value resale, and the UK has a draft ticket resale price cap. Add weather (Bonnaroo cancelled after one day of rain; Defqon.1 lost to a code-red heatwave in June), and the season described below is being fought for harder than at any point since the pandemic. The connective tissue in our own data, the thousands of artists playing more than one 2026 festival, is what keeps a fragmenting circuit feeling like one season.
Most-booked artists of 2026
Lorde tops the season's bookings, appearing at 23 separate festivals, with Wet Leg on 23. Underneath the headliners, 5,513 artists (20% of everyone booked) play more than one 2026 festival, and 1,070 of them play five or more: the connective tissue of the circuit. The ranking measures reach across the season, not billing or fee, so an act playing several mid-size festivals can rank above a single headline slot.
- 1 Lorde 23 festivals
- 2 Wet Leg 23 festivals
- 3 Boys Noize 22 festivals
- 4 KETTAMA 22 festivals
- 5 MPH 22 festivals
- 6 Zara Larsson 22 festivals
- 7 Turnstile 21 festivals
- 8 ¥ØU$UK€ ¥UK1MAT$U 20 festivals
- 9 CMAT 20 festivals
- 10 Geese 20 festivals
- 11 Hamdi 20 festivals
- 12 twenty one pilots 20 festivals
- 13 Holy Priest 19 festivals
- 14 Lewis Capaldi 19 festivals
- 15 Ninajirachi 19 festivals
The headline circuit
1,462 artists take a headline slot in 2026, and 322 of them top the bill at more than one festival. Lorde and twenty one pilots lead the circuit at 16 festivals each. Billing is fluid: 742 artists headline one festival and play further down the bill at another. Counted from the 350 festivals that flag headline billing.
- 1 Lorde 16 festivals
- 2 twenty one pilots 16 festivals
- 3 Gorillaz 13 festivals
- 4 Lewis Capaldi 12 festivals
- 5 The Cure 12 festivals
- 6 The xx 10 festivals
- 7 Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds 9 festivals
- 8 The Strokes 9 festivals
- 9 Limp Bizkit 8 festivals
- 10 RAYE 8 festivals
Busiest weekends of 2026
The season runs hottest over 14-16 Aug 2026, when 3,178 sets land across 19 festivals, roughly seven times the pace of a typical festival weekend, driven by Boomtown, Sziget Festival 2026 and Summer Breeze Open Air. Each festival is counted on the weekend it opens, so these are the weekends where the season's schedule truly stacks up.
Biggest lineups of 2026
Boomtown books 1,303 artists, ahead of Fusion Festival on 1,097. Counted as distinct acts on each festival's schedule.
- 1 Boomtown Winchester, England, United Kingdom · Aug 12, 2026 - Aug 16, 2026 1,303 artists
- 2 Fusion Festival Lärz, Germany · Jun 24, 2026 - Jun 28, 2026 1,097 artists
- 3 Tomorrowland Boom, Antwerp, Belgium · Jul 16 - 19 & Jul 23 - 26, 2026 773 artists
- 4 The Great Escape Brighton, England, United Kingdom · May 13, 2026 - May 16, 2026 690 artists
- 5 Beats for Love Ostrava, Czech Republic · Jul 1, 2026 - Jul 4, 2026 480 artists
- 6 We Out Here Wimborne, England, United Kingdom · Aug 20, 2026 - Aug 23, 2026 474 artists
- 7 GemFest Malmesbury, England, United Kingdom · Jun 11, 2026 - Jun 14, 2026 444 artists
- 8 Zwarte Cross Lichtenvoorde, Netherlands · Jul 16, 2026 - Jul 19, 2026 419 artists
- 9 EDC Las Vegas Las Vegas, Nevada, United States · May 15, 2026 - May 17, 2026 366 artists
- 10 Sziget Festival 2026 Budapest, Budapest, Hungary · Aug 10, 2026 - Aug 15, 2026 365 artists
- 11 Green Man Festival Crickhowell, Wales, United Kingdom · Aug 20, 2026 - Aug 23, 2026 330 artists
- 12 Primavera Sound Barcelona Barcelona, Catalunya, España · Jun 3, 2026 - Jun 7, 2026 300 artists
- 13 Nature One Kastellaun, Germany · Jul 30, 2026 - Aug 2, 2026 299 artists
- 14 Hellfest Clisson, Loire-Atlantique, France · Jun 18, 2026 - Jun 21, 2026 292 artists
- 15 Rebellion Festival Blackpool, England, United Kingdom · Aug 6, 2026 - Aug 9, 2026 291 artists
The 2026 season on the map
The 2026 season plotted around the world. Tap the map to pan and open any festival.
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Explore the full festival mapEvery festival, set times and your friends' plans in the Setline app.
About this data
Setline maintains a directory of music festivals worldwide, with lineups, set times, stages and schedules kept current as they are announced. The figures on this page were drawn from that directory on September 12, 2026 and cover the 745 festivals in the 2026 season, 43,933 scheduled sets and 27,133 artists across 50 countries.
Most-booked artists count the number of separate 2026 festivals each act appears on. The headline circuit counts the distinct festivals whose bills each artist tops, scoped to festivals that flag headline billing. Busiest weekends sum the scheduled sets across every festival opening that weekend. Genre share measures the primary genre of each artist booked in the season, across the artists with known genres. Biggest lineups count the distinct artists on each festival's schedule. The map plots the 546 biggest festivals of the season that carry map coordinates. Counts change as new lineups are announced and schedules are confirmed. Industry context is editorial commentary, reviewed periodically; unlike the figures above it does not refresh nightly. In total, Setline's directory spans 1,062 festivals, 47,179 sets and 28,206 artists across all seasons.