The most awarded voice in bluegrass — crystalline, patient, and backed by the tightest band the genre ever produced.
Hardly Strictly Bluegrass 2026 Lineup
Three free days in Golden Gate Park: six stages of bluegrass, country, folk and soul, endowed in perpetuity by the man who started it.
Find the acts you'll love at Hardly Strictly Bluegrass
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About Hardly Strictly Bluegrass 2026
Hardly Strictly Bluegrass has been free since 2001, and it stays free because founder Warren Hellman endowed it before he died. No tickets, no wristbands, no upsell. Three days across six stages at the west end of Golden Gate Park, running October 2–4 in 2026.
The 2026 bill reads roots music broadly. My Morning Jacket, Emmylou Harris, Mavis Staples, Los Lobos, Alison Krauss & Union Station and Gillian Welch & David Rawlings anchor the three days, with Punch Brothers, Old Crow Medicine Show, Steve Earle, Molly Tuttle, Marty Stuart and Hot Tuna behind them. Toward the edges it gets stranger, and better: Yemeni music played on instruments built from scrap by El Khat, Salinas Valley cumbia from ¿Qiensave?, an Iraqi oud recital from Rahim Alhaj, a queer line dancing party, and a storyteller with no band at all.
Expect americana, folk, country and bluegrass across 70 acts.
Hardly Strictly Bluegrass 2026 lineup & schedule: all 70 acts
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Emmylou Harris
The voice that carried Gram Parsons's idea of country music into every decade since, and the finest curator of other people's songs.
Gillian Welch & David Rawlings
Two voices and two guitars, writing songs that sound a hundred years old and were finished last year.
Los Lobos
East LA's finest, four decades of Mexican folk, blues, soul and garage rock played by the same five men.
Mavis Staples
Gospel and freedom song royalty out of Chicago, and still the most reassuring voice in American music.
Jim James's reverb-drenched howl over southern rock that keeps drifting into something cosmic and unhurried — jam-scene trust earned two hours at a time.
Punch Brothers
Five string players treating bluegrass instrumentation as a chamber ensemble, led by the most restless mandolinist alive.
A Tribute to Joe Ely with The Flatlanders and Friends
Lubbock's Flatlanders and guests saluting Joe Ely, the West Texas songbook played by the people who wrote it.
Nashville songwriter with a glam streak and a Grammy nomination for American Roots Song; power-pop hooks and dry, self-aware lyrics dressed up in East Nashville sequins.
Alison Brown
A banjo player who arrived by way of jazz and a finance career, running a record label by day and rewriting what five strings do by night.
Buddy Miller
Nashville's most requested sideman and producer, with a cracked voice and a guitar tone nobody has managed to copy.
Hiss Golden Messenger
MC Taylor's North Carolina band, gospel-shaped folk rock about faith, doubt and getting through the week.
Hot Tuna Acoustic
Jorma Kaukonen and Jack Casady playing the country blues they were playing before Jefferson Airplane, and kept playing after.
The internet's protest-folk bard — a new topical song every week, Dylan-grade wit aimed at whatever the news cycle just did.
Kathleen Edwards
The Ottawa songwriter who quit music to run a coffee shop and came back sharper, plainspoken about the wreckage.
Lukas Nelson
Willie's son with a weathered tenor of his own, writing country rock that earns the Neil Young comparisons on guitar.
Marty Stuart and His Fabulous Superlatives
Country music's great custodian, rhinestones and a Telecaster, fronting one of the sharpest bands anyone has put on a stage.
Two-time IBMA guitar player of the year — flatpicking virtuosity fronting new-school bluegrass.
'Wagon Wheel' originators and old-time revivalists — a string band that plays with punk-rock urgency.
A mandolin virtuoso since childhood, now writing songs that justify the technique — bluegrass pedigree stretched into something personal.
Steve Earle & The Hardly Strictly Dukes
Three chords and a hard opinion, the Texas songwriter who outlived his own legend and kept writing through it.
The Record Company
A Los Angeles trio playing stripped blues rock on borrowed gear, built for rooms with low ceilings.
Tift Merritt
A North Carolina songwriter with a soul singer's phrasing, writing about staying put and about leaving.
Todd Snider Rules!
Nashville's great shaggy storyteller, half standup comic, whose between song rambles sometimes outlast the songs.
Yasmin Williams & William Tyler
Two instrumental guitarists meeting in the middle, one tapping a lap-held harp guitar and the other bending Nashville drone.
¿Qiensave?
Salinas Valley cumbia from brothers raised around the fields, Spanish language dance music with a California accent.
California bluegrass around a mandolinist who has been winning contests since childhood — tight harmony, West Coast looseness.
Alex Amen
Anna Moss
Brooklyn trio that met busking in the subway: cello, guitar, accordion and found percussion under three-part harmonies, with an NPR Tiny Desk Contest nod for Love in the Underground.
Cristina Vane
Slide guitar and clawhammer banjo from a songwriter raised between Italy and France, now working out of Nashville.
Darrell Scott String Band
A Nashville songwriter with a shelf of other people's hits, leading a string band back through his own catalog.
Dean Johnson
A Seattle songwriter with a low, unhurried baritone and songs that take their time getting anywhere.
Dry Branch Fire Squad
Ron Thomason's long-running traditional outfit, mountain gospel and old-time bluegrass delivered around a comic monologue.
Dug
El Khat
Yemeni music rebuilt on instruments made from scrap metal and junk, played loud and deliberately unsteady.
Elizabeth Cook
A honky-tonk voice out of rural Florida and a wit sharpened on satellite radio, equally at home telling the joke or singing the hurt.
Fantastic Cat
Four New York songwriters who each front their own band, swapping lead vocals and refusing to take any of it seriously.
Grace Cummings
An Australian voice like a storm front, singing folk rock that sits closer to theatre than to comfort.
Ismay
Avery Hellman writing hushed, searching folk on a Sonoma County ranch, songs that circle rather than resolve.
Joel Ben Izzy
John Craigie
A Portland folk singer whose live records are half songs and half standup, and the crowd is in on all of it.
Kam Franklin
The voice of Houston's The Suffers, Gulf Coast soul with a horn section at her back.
Langford, Hogan & Timms
Jon Langford and Sally Timms of The Mekons in a songwriters' round, English punk instincts applied to country music.
Larry Campbell & Teresa Williams
A husband and wife duo out of Woodstock, Dylan's old bandleader and a singer who can hold a room with one line.
Laurie Lewis & The Right Hands
A California bluegrass institution, fiddle and a high clear voice, who taught half the Bay Area's pickers along the way.
Mama's Broke
Two Canadians harmonizing in close, sour intervals, folk songs that sound dug up rather than written.
Marco and the Polos
Martha Scanlan & Jon Neufeld
A Montana songwriter and a Portland guitarist, spare old-time songs about land, weather and staying put.
Meels
Miko Marks
A Black country singer Nashville turned away twice, back on her own terms and working out of the Bay Area.
Moonalice
A Bay Area jam band assembled from veterans of the psychedelic era, with its own poster art tradition attached.
Rahim Alhaj
An Iraqi oud master exiled to New Mexico, composing pieces that carry the news from home.
Reckless Kelly
Idaho brothers who became an Austin institution, red dirt country with rock guitars and no Nashville gloss.
Scuff: Queer Line Dancing
SF Porchfest
Shawn Camp
A songwriter's songwriter with a fiddle, whose cuts pay other people's mortgages all over Nashville.
Stacey Earle
Small, plainspoken folk songs sung beside her husband Mark Stuart, quieter by choice than the family name suggests.
Stella Heath Quartet
Steve Poltz
A folk singer with no off switch, co-writer of 'You Were Meant for Me' and a set that never runs the same way twice.
Sweet Sally
The Crooked Jades
San Francisco string band digging beneath bluegrass into old-time, banjos tuned low and the arrangements left haunted.
The Crosby Collective
The Deslondes
New Orleans five piece trading lead vocals around, country and soul and swamp pop rubbed together until they blur.
The Third Mind
Dave Alvin's improvising psych outfit, taking sixties folk rock apart in the studio with the tape left running.
Theo Lawrence
A Frenchman writing countrypolitan songs in English, pedal steel and all, and getting away with it completely.
A duo pairing the Wood & Wire frontman with the Greencards mandolinist, two Texas-connected pickers trading songs in a stripped-back acoustic setting.
Big-hearted showman-rock — a bar-band Springsteen for the group chat era, played with total sincerity, showmanship as its own kind of honesty.
Willy Tea Taylor
A Central Valley cowboy with a four string tenor guitar, telling long stories about small towns.
Wreckless Strangers
The headliners
My Morning Jacket — Jim James's reverb-drenched howl over southern rock that keeps drifting into something cosmic and unhurried — jam-scene trust earned two hours at a time. Reverb, patience and a singer who can fill a meadow without trying.
Alison Krauss & Union Station — The most awarded voice in bluegrass — crystalline, patient, and backed by the tightest band the genre ever produced. The most precise band in bluegrass, back on the road together.
Up-and-comers to catch early
Jesse Welles — The topical songwriter who built an audience one phone-filmed verse at a time.
The lineup by day
Friday lineup (October 2)
Los Lobos, My Morning Jacket, Lukas Nelson, Marty Stuart and His Fabulous Superlatives, Molly Tuttle, Sierra Hull + 11 more
Saturday lineup (October 3)
Alison Krauss & Union Station, Gillian Welch & David Rawlings, Mavis Staples, Aaron Lee Tasjan, Alison Brown, Buddy Miller + 22 more
Sunday lineup (October 4)
Emmylou Harris, Punch Brothers, A Tribute to Joe Ely with The Flatlanders and Friends, Hiss Golden Messenger, Jesse Welles, The Record Company + 19 more
Hardly Strictly Bluegrass 2026 lineup FAQ
When is Hardly Strictly Bluegrass 2026?
October 2–4, 2026 (Friday through Sunday).
How much does Hardly Strictly Bluegrass cost?
Nothing. It has been free to the public since 2001, endowed by founder Warren Hellman so that it stays that way.
Where is it held?
At the west end of Golden Gate Park in San Francisco, across six stages spread through Hellman Hollow, Marx Meadow and Lindley Meadow.
Does Hardly Strictly Bluegrass have headliners?
Not officially. The festival prints its lineup alphabetically within each day and bills nobody above anyone else. The largest draws in 2026 are My Morning Jacket, Emmylou Harris, Mavis Staples, Alison Krauss & Union Station, Los Lobos and Gillian Welch & David Rawlings.
Have set times been announced?
Not at the time of writing. The festival said stage assignments and set times would post on September 22, 2026.
How many acts are playing in 2026?
70 across the three days.
How do I find the acts I'd like?
Type a few artists you love into the finder at the top of this page. It matches them against this lineup and explains each pick.
Who plays Friday at Hardly Strictly Bluegrass 2026?
Friday, October 2: Los Lobos, My Morning Jacket, Lukas Nelson, Marty Stuart and His Fabulous Superlatives, Molly Tuttle, Sierra Hull, plus 11 more acts.
Who plays Saturday at Hardly Strictly Bluegrass 2026?
Saturday, October 3: Alison Krauss & Union Station, Gillian Welch & David Rawlings, Mavis Staples, Aaron Lee Tasjan, Alison Brown, Buddy Miller, plus 22 more acts.
Who plays Sunday at Hardly Strictly Bluegrass 2026?
Sunday, October 4: Emmylou Harris, Punch Brothers, A Tribute to Joe Ely with The Flatlanders and Friends, Hiss Golden Messenger, Jesse Welles, The Record Company, plus 19 more acts.
Going to Hardly Strictly Bluegrass 2026? Get tickets ↗
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