My Chemical Romance
Concept-album maximalists who treated emo as opera — marching-band drums, guitar harmonies, and a costume for every era, theatrical to the last note.
Aftershock 2026 Lineup
Four days and 140-plus bands of rock, metal and hardcore on the Sacramento riverfront.
About Aftershock 2026
Aftershock is the West Coast's biggest rock festival: four October days at Discovery Park on the Sacramento riverfront, 142 bands, and a definition of "heavy" wide enough to be almost meaningless. Each night has its own personality in 2026 — My Chemical Romance's theatrics on Thursday, a Friday that hands the main stage to Limp Bizkit, Wu-Tang Clan, Public Enemy, and Cypress Hill, Pierce The Veil over a deep post-hardcore reunion slate on Saturday, and Tool closing Sunday with Queens of the Stone Age, AFI, and Danny Elfman beneath them. Somewhere in the middle sit Dethklok, Buckethead, Insane Clown Posse, and a quartet of headbanging cellists, which is the whole thesis of this festival in one sentence.
Expect post-hardcore, metal, rock and emo across 142 acts.
The headliners
- My Chemical Romance — Concept-album maximalists who treated emo as opera — marching-band drums, guitar harmonies, and a costume for every era, theatrical to the last note.
- Tool — Ten-minute studies in odd meter and slow release, staged with visuals that make the arena feel like a ritual — no phones, full attention.
- Limp Bizkit — The most maligned band of their era, reborn as a genuinely joyful live act that's in on every joke — 'Break Stuff' as communal therapy.
- Pierce The Veil — Flamenco-flecked guitar runs and Vic Fuentes's impossible upper register, back after a long, mythologised absence — 'King for a Day' pandemonium assured.
Up-and-comers to catch early
- Sleep Theory — Memphis's fastest-rising alt-metal band — soul in the clean vocal, weight everywhere else.
- The Home Team — Groove-first pop-metalcore from Seattle; the rare heavy band you can actually dance to.
- DRAIN — Santa Cruz hardcore run like a pool party — the friendliest pit of the weekend.
- Paleface Swiss — Swiss beatdown that went from clubs to festival stages in about three years flat.
- Spite — Bay Area deathcore on close-to-home turf, and getting bigger with every tour.
- Bodysnatcher — Two minutes at a time and no wasted motion — Florida beatdown at its most direct.
Other acts worth planning around
- Wu-Tang Clan — Nine MCs on a rock festival's main stage, and still the loudest crowd of Friday.
- Public Enemy — Chuck D on a Sacramento riverbank; the catalog has never needed a rewrite.
- Danny Elfman — Boingo songs and film scores in one set — the strangest booking on the poster, and probably the best.
- Dethklok — A cartoon band with a very real, very good death-metal lineup standing behind it.
- Body Count feat. Ice-T — Thirty-five years of saying it plainly, at thrash tempo.
- Buckethead — No banter, no let-up — an hour of the fastest and weirdest guitar playing anyone will do all weekend.
- Circa Survive — Reunited and playing festivals again after years away; the Saturday set worth arriving early for.
- Oleander — A hometown booking with actual history — late-'90s Sacramento radio rock, back on its own riverfront.
The lineup by day
- Thursday, October 1: My Chemical Romance, The Offspring, Sublime, The Used, The Pretty Reckless, Hot Mulligan + 29 more
- Friday, October 2: Limp Bizkit, $UICIDEBOY$, Wu-Tang Clan, Public Enemy, Cypress Hill, Slaughter To Prevail + 30 more
- Saturday, October 3: Pierce The Veil, A Day To Remember, BABYMETAL, Circa Survive, The Story So Far, Sleeping with Sirens + 30 more
- Sunday, October 4: Tool, Queens of the Stone Age, Danny Elfman, AFI, Stone Temple Pilots, Dance Gavin Dance + 29 more
Aftershock 2026 lineup FAQ
When is Aftershock 2026?
October 1–4, 2026 — Thursday through Sunday.
Where does Aftershock take place?
Discovery Park in Sacramento, California, where the American and Sacramento rivers meet.
Who is headlining Aftershock 2026?
My Chemical Romance (Thursday), Limp Bizkit (Friday), Pierce The Veil (Saturday), and Tool (Sunday).
How many bands are playing Aftershock 2026?
142 announced acts across four days.
What days do specific bands play?
Every act's day is already on this page — expand the full lineup below or check the day-by-day breakdown. Stage times usually land closer to the festival.
How do I figure out which of the 142 bands 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.
More festival lineups
Lollapalooza lineup →Hopscotch lineup →The Fest lineup →Rebellion lineup →III Points lineup →Lost Lands lineup →Louder Than Life lineup →All Points East lineup →End of the Road lineup →ARC lineup →Warped Tour Orlando lineup →Austin City Limits lineup →Reading & Leeds lineup →EDC Orlando lineup →Bourbon & Beyond lineup →Riot Fest lineup →Outside Lands lineup →Green Man lineup →HARD Summer lineup →Osheaga lineup →Bass Canyon lineup →Hulaween lineup →Honcho Campout lineup →Portola lineup →Furnace Fest lineup →Shaky Knees lineup →Sick New World Texas lineup →Hinterland lineup →All Things Go DMV lineup →Raleigh Wide Open lineup →Oceans Calling lineup →Darker Waves lineup →Bumbershoot lineup →Ohana lineup →Sea.Hear.Now lineup →Iron Blossom lineup →All Things Go NYC lineup →
Going to Aftershock 2026? Get tickets ↗
▸ Browse the full lineup (142 acts)▾ Hide full lineup
Aftershock full lineup
Tool
Ten-minute studies in odd meter and slow release, staged with visuals that make the arena feel like a ritual — no phones, full attention.
Limp Bizkit
The most maligned band of their era, reborn as a genuinely joyful live act that's in on every joke — 'Break Stuff' as communal therapy.
Pierce The Veil
Flamenco-flecked guitar runs and Vic Fuentes's impossible upper register, back after a long, mythologised absence — 'King for a Day' pandemonium assured.
$UICIDEBOY$
Grimy, Memphis-indebted rap about self-destruction, built into one of the largest underground followings in music — G59 loyalty runs religious.
Queens of the Stone Age
Josh Homme's robot-boogie riffs — heavy music with a lounge singer's sense of swing and menace, desert-rock royalty at full strut.
The Offspring
Thirty years of hooks that snuck genuine punk speed onto daytime radio without anyone noticing — the catalog is basically all singles.
A Day To Remember
The pop-punk/metalcore hybrid blueprint — mosh-call breakdowns and sugar-rush hooks in equal measure, delivered with beach balls, confetti cannons, and total arena confidence.
Wu-Tang Clan
Nine MCs over dusty kung-fu-flick soul loops — still the most-imitated blueprint in rap, '36 Chambers' eternal.
Sublime
Sun-bleached ska-punk-dub hybrid, now carried by Bradley Nowell's son with the songs left intact — '40oz. to Freedom' forever.
Danny Elfman
The Oingo Boingo frontman turned Hollywood's default composer, playing both halves of that career loud — 'Dead Man's Party' into the Batman theme and back.
BABYMETAL
J-pop choreography welded to genuine power-metal chops — a premise that should not work and completely does, now with arena-scale production and a decade of converted skeptics.
Circa Survive
Anthony Green's art-punk flagship, reunited — soaring, strange, and beloved, with a fanbase that treats these songs as sacred text.
Public Enemy
Chuck D's baritone over air-raid production — protest music that has never needed updating, with Flavor Flav as eternal hype engine.
AFI
Hardcore kids who kept drifting toward goth and new wave until they'd built something entirely their own — East Bay punk roots under eyeliner-era anthems and Davey Havok's theatrical wail.
The Used
Bert McCracken's shredded-throat delivery over songs that never bothered to hide the mess — the mess was always the point.
Stone Temple Pilots
Grunge-era hitmakers with a glam streak their peers were too earnest to attempt — 'Plush' through 'Interstate Love Song', hooks for days.
Cypress Hill
B-Real's nasal snarl over DJ Muggs's murk — the group that made stoner rap a genre with a flag, 'Insane in the Brain' still a jump-along ritual.
Slaughter To Prevail
Alex Terrible's subterranean roar over deathcore built like siege machinery — as much spectacle as band, and heavier than both.
The Pretty Reckless
Taylor Momsen's grunge-blooded hard rock — smoky, heavy, chart-topping, with more rock-radio #1s than most legacy acts.
The Story So Far
Modern pop-punk standard-bearers — gruff, fast, and beloved, Walnut Creek's chip-on-shoulder anthems in full stride, pits and singalongs in equal measure.
Dance Gavin Dance
Swancore's funk-flecked flagship — technicolor riffs and dual-vocal whiplash, a prolific catalog that never stopped mutating.
Coheed and Cambria
Sci-fi concept-rock saga with arena hooks — 'Welcome Home' indeed, the Amory Wars mythology powering some of modern prog's biggest singalongs.
Hot Mulligan
Midwest emo's chaotic favorites — screamed choruses, absurd song titles, real feelings, and a crowd that knows every word including the yelps.
Sleeping with Sirens
Kellin Quinn's falsetto-fronted post-hardcore — Warped Tour royalty matured, with the high notes fully intact and scene-era devotion still filling rooms.
DOWN
A NOLA supergroup playing swampy, Sabbath-worshipping sludge with Phil Anselmo at the front — pedigree drawn from half the city's heavy bands.
Dethklok
Metalocalypse's cartoon death-metal band, real and devastating live — Brendon Small's shred played against the animation at brutal volume.
Three 6 Mafia
Memphis's murk-and-menace originators, whose tape-hiss production is now the foundation of half of underground rap — Oscar winners, improbably.
Black Label Society
Zakk Wylde's biker-metal brotherhood — pinch harmonics for days, Sabbath-weight riffs, and guitar solos treated as main events.
Chiodos
Craig Owens's theatrical post-hardcore, reunited — MySpace-era drama with real stakes, piano flourishes and that unmistakable swooping vocal intact.
Highly Suspect
Bluesy, scuffed-up rock delivered with a chip on the shoulder and a genuine gift for a chorus — grit and hooks at festival scale.
Nothing More
San Antonio alt-metal showmen — bass-throwing spectacle, Grammy-nominated hooks, and a stage rig built like a science experiment.
Body Count feat. Ice-T
Ice-T fronting a thrash band with the same bluntness he brought to rap — the point has never been subtle.
Cavalera
Max and Iggor performing Sepultura's 'Roots' in full — Brazilian metal history live, from the brothers who wrote it.
Killswitch Engage
Metalcore's standard-bearers — 'The End of Heartache' still detonates, two decades of the genre's template played by its authors.
Zakk Sabbath
Zakk Wylde playing Sabbath songs with reverence and absurd volume — a tribute act with a guitar hero attached, pinch harmonics included.
Insane Clown Posse
The Faygo flies at sundown — whoop whoop, and genuinely one of music's strangest, most loyal communities gathered in one place.
Kublai Khan TX
Texas hardcore at its most punishing — mosh calls with a message, and a low end that treats subtlety as a character flaw.
New Found Glory
The pop-punk band other pop-punk bands cite — three decades of unreasonably durable hooks and a work ethic to match.
Wolfmother
Unapologetic '70s riff worship played with enough conviction to make the pastiche irrelevant — 'Woman' still a lightning strike.
Wage War
Florida metalcore balancing modern polish against breakdowns with genuine weight — dependable heaviness, album after album.
Underoath
'They're Only Chasing Safety' to now — metalcore's restless innovators, reinventing loudly in every era, and the reinventions keep landing.
Theory of a Deadman
Radio rock that pivoted from swagger to piano ballads and kept the audience either way — Vancouver pragmatists with hooks to spare.
Mayday Parade
Warped Tour survivors trading in the specific ache of a song you loved at sixteen — 'Miserable at Best' still empties the tear ducts.
Alexisonfire
Canada's post-hardcore heart — three voices trading scream, croon, and rasp across one beloved catalog, with reunion sets that feel like national holidays back home.
Chad Gray: Voice of Mudvayne & HELLYEAH
A solo billing built entirely around two decades of nu-metal and groove-metal frontman work — Mudvayne intensity and HELLYEAH swagger in one set.
Coal Chamber
Spooky-kid nu-metal with detuned bounce and a goth streak the genre mostly abandoned — 'Loco'-era heaviness back from the grave.
Suicidal Tendencies
Venice crossover legends — 'Institutionalized' and a pit that never ages, Cyco Mike still leading the charge.
Starset
Space-suit cinematic rock — sci-fi lore with radio-metal hooks, a full 'demonstration' rather than a mere concert.
Sevendust
Lajon Witherspoon's soul-trained voice over grinding alt-metal — the reason they outlasted the scene, and the warmest crowd in heavy music.
La Dispute
Narrative post-hardcore delivered closer to recitation than singing, and devastating for it — short stories screamed at full band volume.
The Starting Line
Early-2000s pop-punk with more craft than the era gave it credit for — 'The Best of Me' aging like a yearbook photo you actually like.
DRAIN
Sunny California hardcore that treats a circle pit as a party rather than a fight — the scene's most reliably grinning live band.
The Wonder Years
Pop-punk that grew up in public — suburban specifics rendered with novelistic detail, Dan Campbell narrating adulthood in real time.
The Ghost Inside
A band whose survival story is inseparable from the music's insistence on pushing forward — melodic hardcore as literal testament.
Paleface Swiss
Swiss beatdown with a genuinely unsettling vocal performance sitting on top of the chug — Europe's heaviest recent export.
The Home Team
Seattle's funk-flecked pop-metalcore — groove first, breakdowns second, and falsetto hooks the scene didn't see coming.
We The Kings
'Check Yes Juliet' — MySpace-era pop-punk sunshine, Florida warmth that never curdled, and the chorus still checks yes.
P.O.D.
'Alive' and 'Youth of the Nation' — San Diego's nu-metal survivors, positivity intact through every scene cycle.
Thursday
'Full Collapse' pioneers — the bridge between hardcore and emo, still vital, with Geoff Rickly's yelp intact.
From Ashes To New
Rap-rock revivalists trading verses between a singer and an MC, straight out of the 2000s playbook — updated production, same adrenaline.
Sleep Theory
New-generation alt-metal built on a soulful clean vocal and a very modern low end — the format's next arena act in waiting.
L.S. Dunes
MCR, Thursday, and Circa Survive members' supergroup — urgent, veteran post-hardcore played like a first band, not a side project.
Lit
'My Own Worst Enemy' — one perfect song and a very good time, delivered by SoCal pros who know exactly why you came.
Cradle of Filth
Gothic-horror black metal with orchestration, shrieks, and a theatrical streak a mile wide — extreme metal's most committed haunted-house act.
From First To Last
Mid-2000s screamo whose most famous alumnus left to become a dubstep producer — 'Dear Diary' drama that still hits the scene's pleasure centers.
President
Apocalyptica
Classically trained Finnish cellists who started by covering Metallica and never stopped headbanging — symphonic metal where the strings genuinely shred.
Atreyu
OC metalcore originators — 'Lip Gloss and Black' nostalgia with new-era polish, from a band that helped write the genre's melodic playbook in the first place.
Finch
'What It Is to Burn'-era post-hardcore, still one of the era's most-loved single records — a title track that remains a scene-wide scream-along.
Hawthorne Heights
Midwest emo of the screaming-bridge school — earnest to a degree the era later got embarrassed about, which is exactly why it endures.
Set It Off
Theatrical pop-rock with orchestral flourishes and a frontman who can genuinely belt — Broadway instincts at Warped velocity.
Corrosion of Conformity
Hardcore punks who became southern-fried sludge lifers somewhere around the third record — 'Deliverance'-era grooves still anchoring the set.
Kylesa
Savannah sludge-psych institution — dual drummers, buzzsaw riffs, and swirling psychedelia, returned from a long hiatus with the heaviness intact.
Saosin
The Anthony Green-fronted EP is the stuff of scene legend; the live show still leans on it — 'Seven Years' guaranteed to level the tent.
Buckethead
A KFC bucket, a white mask, and some of the fastest and strangest guitar playing anyone has committed to tape.
Helmet
Page Hamilton's precision-machined downstrokes — the band a generation of nu-metal quietly ripped off, still tighter than all of them.
Filter
'Hey Man Nice Shot' — Richard Patrick's industrial-rock sneer intact, machine-tooled riffs from NIN's family tree.
Soulfly
Max Cavalera's post-Sepultura vehicle, still fusing tribal percussion with pure groove-metal weight — three decades of roar undiminished.
Blessthefall
Clean-and-scream metalcore from the Rise Records boom, played with more muscle than nostalgia — Phoenix scene veterans who kept the choruses enormous.
The Devil Wears Prada
Metalcore that kept getting darker and more atmospheric long after their scene peers stopped trying — the rare legacy act still improving.
Senses Fail
New Jersey post-hardcore that got angrier and more political as it aged, not softer — Buddy Nielsen leading with total candor.
Melvins
Forty years of deliberately difficult, punishingly slow riffs — and the band Nirvana learned from, still outweirding everyone downstream.
Municipal Waste
Party thrash played at a ludicrous clip — beer, gore, and songs that rarely reach two minutes, with crowd-surfing quotas to meet.
Blue Medusa
Counterparts
Melodic hardcore with lyrics that read like a private crisis shouted at a room — Hamilton veterans who never learned to hold anything back.
Oleander
Sacramento's own late-'90s radio rock, playing a hometown crowd that remembers every word — 'Why I'm Here' loudest of all.
Spite
Bay Area deathcore with a bottomless low end and breakdowns that arrive like a door being kicked in — no melody, no mercy.
After The Burial
Early djent architects out of Minneapolis — eight-string polyrhythms and huge grooves whose low end still lands harder live than any recording has managed to capture.
Toadies
'Possum Kingdom' — Texas alt-rock's eternal dark ride, still promising to be your angel nightly, Texas gothic in radio form.
Finger Eleven
Canadian alt-rock with a knack for a slinky, unexpected groove under the radio singles — 'Paralyzer' the funkiest thing rock radio played that decade.
Drowning Pool
Forever attached to one enormous song, and entirely comfortable with that — 'Bodies' still detonates, and the rest of the set hits harder than expected.
The Black Dahlia Murder
Melodic death metal played with a fan's enthusiasm — carrying on after the loss of their frontman, with the songbook honored nightly.
Armor For Sleep
A concept record about being dead, delivered with more atmosphere than its scene usually allowed — 'What to Do When You Are Dead' remains a mid-2000s emo cult document.
Horse The Band
Metalcore with 8-bit keyboard leads — the band that made 'Nintendocore' an actual thing people argue about, chaotic and funnier live than seems possible.
Holding Absence
Welsh post-hardcore romantics — soaring, heart-first heaviness, every chorus written to be wept through, Cardiff sincerity at full wingspan.
Haywire
Bodysnatcher
Florida beatdown with no interest in subtlety — grief and rage compressed into two-minute assaults, as heavy emotionally as it is sonically.
Escape the Fate
Vegas post-hardcore that survived a frontman swap and a decade of scene churn intact — arena-scene hooks with a survivor's stubbornness.
The Acacia Strain
Punishingly slow, tuned-into-the-floor heaviness with Vincent Bennett's misanthropy on top — doom tempos, hardcore intent, heaviness as a moral position.
Jutes
ivri
Free Throw
Twinkly, self-lacerating emo about mental health, sung like it's being confessed rather than performed — catharsis with a Nashville accent.
Caskets
Haarper
PeelingFlesh
Pentagram
Proto-doom lifers whose long-delayed recognition arrived decades after the riffs did — still summoning the '70s dark.
Cro-Mags
NYHC founders whose 'Age of Quarrel' remains the crossover blueprint — hardcore fury and metal precision fused before the terms had settled.
Holywatr
Alesana
Literary-concept screamo out of Raleigh — dual vocals, Poe-inspired storylines, and no interest whatsoever in restraint, beloved by everyone who owned a studded belt in 2008.
Stick To Your Guns
Melodic hardcore with a conscience — sermons about solidarity delivered at full sprint, Orange County conviction two decades deep.
Hail The Sun
A drummer-vocalist fronting frantic, jazz-inflected post-hardcore that changes direction every eight bars — Chico's contribution to the Swancore canon.
I See Stars
The Union Underground
The Word Alive
Wind Walkers
Nekrogoblikon
Emery
'The Question'-era screamo-pop veterans, still swinging — dueling vocals and dynamic whiplash from one of the scene's smartest bands.
The Fall of Troy
Drop Dead, Gorgeous
Gideon
Alabama metalcore turned mean — melodic roots swapped for something nu-metal-adjacent, and the heaviness pays for the trade.
Red
'End of Silence' anniversary — orchestral Christian metal's biggest debut, replayed in full with the strings intact.
Ill Niño
ünloco
Fear, And Loathing in Las Vegas
CKY
Psychostick
Austin Carlile: The Original Voice of Of Mice & Men
The original Of Mice & Men vocalist returning to the material after years away from touring — a scene-history moment for everyone who wore out those first records.
Codefendants
The Pretty Wild
Rivers of Nihil
Brujeria
Emarosa
Post-hardcore turned silk-smooth pop-rock, with one of the scene's most distinctive clean vocals — a reinvention so complete the back catalog sounds like another band.
I Set My Friends On Fire
Silly Goose
LEAP
The Violent Hour
Ladrones
Eyes Set To Kill
vianova
Doobie
