The lineup is usually the major deciding factor the first time you go to a festival, and Outside Lands delivered a stellar one this year. Charli XCX, The Strokes, and RÜFÜS DU SOL led the weekend, and you can read about my favorite performances in The 5 Best Sets I Saw at My First Outside Lands. Looking back at past lineups, I wish I’d paid attention to this festival sooner, but I’m glad 2026 was the first year I could attend.

What impressed me more than any single name was the collective curation that made the weekend special. You could spend your time at SOMA, stick to the main stages, or wander the stages looking for new artists, and have a great time either way. Twin Peaks, the second main stage, is nearly as big as Lands End and built for main-stage acts. It hosted Baby Keem, Tinashe, Malcolm Todd, and KWN.

On Lands End, Labrinth sounded just like his recordings, and hearing his synths and layered production at full volume hit deep in a way a recording can’t always capture. We caught his set from Grass Lands, which I’ll share more about later. Magnus Ferrell, Will Ferrell’s son, fresh off a viral moment, was entertaining; he has a good voice, and his show is finding its confidence. I also heard Infinity Song live for the first time on the Panhandle stage, a quartet of siblings singing covers with virtuosity well beyond their years.

Outside the park, the OL Night Shows around the city brought Modest Mouse, Clipse, GriZ, and others to local venues for intimate shows.

Outside Lands occupies one portion of Golden Gate Park’s huge footprint.

The map is split into five main areas with activations and vendors at every turn, and it hosted eight stages. No stage felt too far from the next, and each still felt like its own world. The main stage, Lands End, fronts a large polo field, while the rest are set among the park’s trees, which act as a natural sound barrier and keep every set feeling self-contained.

The stage that surprised me most was Duboce Triangle. It’s one of the smallest at the festival, set in a natural amphitheater on a hillside and tucked between the pathways to other areas, and it’s built for intimate sets.

Wine Lands has an elevated view of Duboce, so you can watch the artists perform while trying local wines and sharing charcuterie and small bites. Several artists who also played bigger stages performed a second set at Duboce, like Chezile (Panhandle) and Luke Alessi (SOMA).

Duboce Triangle is also where the weekend’s surprise set landed. It was billed in the Outside Lands app but not announced before the festival, and it turned out to be Leon Bridges, playing new songs from his album, Happiness Anytime, a little over a month before its release. It was my first time seeing him live, and hearing an artist of his stature on a stage that size felt special for everyone willing to wander over and give it a try. It was one of many great sets I caught there.

SOMA, the festival’s dedicated house and techno stage in Marx Meadow, was packed all weekend. It was the only stage that required a line to get in, and it was worth the wait every time. Odd Mob & OMNOM presented Hyperbeam; ¥ØU$UK€ ¥UK1MAT$U tore it up, and the stage matched the music’s engulfing vibe, with massive LED triangles arching over the dance floor as bright strobes cut through the fog. It looked so incredible at night.

SOMA started as an indoor tent over five years ago before moving outdoors, and this year’s lineup also included Lane 8, Boris Brejcha, Boys Noize, and Ben Böhmer. New this year, SOMA Social Club offered a premium upgrade with a private lounge, unobstructed stage views, and bottle service.

Dolores’, the festival’s queer, open-air dance club, sits at the other end of the polo field from Lands End and had interesting programming all weekend. Each day featured a local collective: Hot Goth GF on Friday, OASIS on Saturday, and Polyglamorous on Sunday, with performers like DJ Minx, D’Arcy Drollinger, and Kori King & Lydia B Kollins. Romy played a DJ set there on Friday, the day before performing with The xx on the Twin Peaks stage. A new Dolores’ courtyard added a Glam Bar, haircuts by The Barb Shop, and a pop-up from Everybody’s Tavern.

Sutro sits next to the main stage and hosted some of the weekend’s most thrilling sets, including Turnstile, Death Cab for Cutie, PinkPantheress, and Sienna Spiro. Tall trees line the whole area, a big hill gives you a better view (fans claimed it all weekend), and at night the trees light up in different colors. It was one of my favorite stages.

The largest activation I’d never seen at a festival before was Grass Lands, powered by Zig Zag. For years, Outside Lands has offered a dedicated area where adults 21 and over can legally buy and consume cannabis on-site. It was interesting to see a festival offer something so openly and easily, given the massive effort it would take to pull this off almost anywhere else outside California.

It was curated tastefully, with beverages, edibles, and pre-rolled flower in a range of potencies and strains; the prices were reasonable; the budtenders were extremely kind and helpful; and overall, from what I saw, people were generally respectful of the space. Grass Lands also has a partial view of the main stage from a very specific angle, which makes it a good shaded spot to sit and listen or stand and watch.

I like to arrive early and explore before and between sets. Outside Lands had a lot to experience and enjoy throughout the weekend.

I wandered into City Hall, where couples can get legally married or renew their vows throughout the weekend, and you can walk in and watch them tie the knot. Ceremonies take place at The Mission in Hellman Hollow, and each day between 2 and 4 pm, a couple can also say their vows on the Lands End main stage in front of the crowd. Bingo Loco drew a devoted crowd all three days, with prizes like tickets to next year’s festival. Other activations offered customizable vinyl art, themed photo booths by area, vintage shopping, and multi-level bars and dance floors that gave you a break from the main stages.

I left with plenty of OL-themed gear from the activations- pins, hats, small trinkets, photos, and snacks. A few of the activations were exclusive, like Chase Sapphire for its cardholders or Apple Pay for its users, but the GA activations were all great.

San Francisco has an incredible food scene, and it showed up at Outside Lands. Billed as Taste of the Bay Area, the vendor lineup covered a wide range of cultures and flavors, including stalwarts representing decades of the city’s best eats. More than 100 restaurants took part, nearly all of them local to Northern California. Hands down, the best thing I ate was the chicken banh mi from Saigon Sandwich, a family-run SF spot that’s been serving the community since the 1980s.

Beer Lands and Wine Lands featured local vendors with a wide range of choices. At Wine Lands, you could also get elevated snacks like a caviar hot dog or caviar tater tots, a camembert baguette, or charcuterie. Beyond Beer Lands and Wine Lands, The Mixery presented by Owen’s Craft Mixers had a curated cocktail menu. I tried an espresso martini with parmesan foam, and it was delicious.

Most dishes beyond a quick bite ran north of $18, which may be steep for the average person, but overall it seemed consistent with the city’s general pricing, so nothing too out of the ordinary if you’re visiting.

New this year, the Snack Series helped: more than 20 restaurants offered snack-sized versions of their signature dishes for $16 or less from a secret menu, marked with a Snack Series icon on their signs. Limited-edition menu items, made exclusively for the festival, were capped at 10 orders a day and included Love Burn’s four-level hot chicken challenge (the final tender required a waiver) and Little Sweet’s Durian Sticky Rice Waffle. Golden Gate Club ticket holders also had chef-driven dining from Tyler Florence, Melissa King, and Boulevard.

The festival’s food program also centers on sustainability. Vendors use compostable plates, utensils, and packaging; refillable stainless steel cups for beer, wine, and cocktails can be reused all weekend or brought back the next year; and free water refill stations are spread throughout the grounds, so bring a reusable bottle.

If you’ve never been to San Francisco, you’ll learn quickly that it’s usually foggy or will become foggy. Locals even have a name for it, Karl the Fog, and he was around all weekend. The fogginess, of course, carries a wet chill in the air, so it’s the kind of festival where you can wear a great fit during the day but still need a hoodie or a knit blanket by evening, so come prepared. It always felt like it was about to rain, and sometimes it did sprinkle, but it never fully rained. Given how hot most festivals get, it was somewhat refreshing.

Overall, SF fans were pretty chill, unless moshing at Turnstile or dancing at Frost Children. The first two days moved smoothly: busy, but the flow of people felt manageable. It was pretty easy to walk from Sutro or SOMA to Grass Lands or to an activation.

Sunday, however, felt different, with a lot of shoulder-to-shoulder walking in spots around the main stage that had been easy to move through on the other days. A lot of the fans on Sunday were teens, which I only know because they tend to cluster around and obviously look younger. SF Chronicle, which I imagine has been to OL for many years or at least more times than I have, asked, “Does Outside Lands have a teenager problem?” and probably not more or less than I’ve seen at other music festivals in major cities around the U.S., but again I’ve only been once.

Aside from some walks taking a little longer on Sunday, I didn’t encounter any major crowd issues throughout the weekend. Overall, the festival was noticeably busier on Sunday, regardless of age, but still a great time all three days.

If you’re flying into SFO, BART runs from the airport into the city, so getting downtown is easy.

Once festival weekend arrives, you’ll have plenty of options for getting to the festival. A Muni bus stop sits right outside the GA entrance, ride-share is an option, and the festival runs a shuttle between the park and downtown SF, with shuttle passes sold separately from festival tickets. We stayed at a hotel downtown, about a mile from the shuttle pickup at Bill Graham Civic Auditorium, walked to the shuttle pickup, and a fleet of at least 30 charter buses ran without a hitch all three days.

I left as the headliners’ final song ended each night and never had an issue getting on a shuttle. I had to wait a little longer on Sunday because I was at Twin Peaks for Baby Keem, but if you’re at main stage or Sutro, it’s pretty easy to leave the festival. Fans I talked to in line who were pressed toward the front of the crowd at the main stages had mixed luck: some got right on with a short wait, while others waited a little over an hour.

There are plenty of places to stay around the city, so book early if you’re planning to go, and find the best option for your travel needs since there are Airbnbs and other rentals directly outside of the festival. The same goes for tickets: 3-Day GA, GA+, and VIP all sold out ahead of the 2026 festival.

I’d absolutely go again. If the lineup speaks to you in a given year and you want to try something different on the West Coast, Outside Lands is worth the trip. It’s easy to reach by public transit, which is huge, and it ends early enough that you can still experience San Francisco’s nightlife or attend a Night Show and see one of the lineup’s artists in a more intimate setting. It also lands in August, after most of the summer festival frenzy has started to slow down. People who enjoy Bonnaroo, Lollapalooza, or III Points might really enjoy this festival. Next time, I’m making it to Bingo Loco for a game!

Outside Lands Music and Arts Festival, the largest independent U.S. festival, is organized by Superfly, Another Planet Entertainment, and Starr Hill Presents. OL returns to Golden Gate Park on August 6–8, 2027. Watch the Official Afterglow Video to relive this year’s festival, and see more info at sfoutsidelands.com.