With music festivals, it’s always going to be a slippery slope when it comes to pleasing your attendees. Everyone’s got different tastes, which is the beautiful thing about music as a whole. But in that same breath, it makes all the more difficult to balance things out.
Then of course you have to factor in the demographic you are mostly catering your event to. That’s a whole other beast that you could spend hours trying to wrap your head around. But however, for whatever reason, Coachella has seemingly put less of a focus on one of the biggest genres in the world, hip-hop.
If you do the math, that’s a 70% drop off from 2022, the most sprawling year for rap in the last nine years. That year, 19 MCs were on the roster.
When Is Coachella 2026?
But the cherry on top? This is now the smallest group of rappers of all time in the 26-year history of Coachella. While some are not too happy with this and the lineup in general, others believe that the organizers did the right thing.
“This mostly gotta do with the way hip hop has been charting,” one user points out. It has been a lackluster year for rap, particularly when it comes to mainstream staying power.
Another states, “That’s great news. Hiphop was meant for US. They want that mass appeal pop music go to Drake. We don’t need to be everywhere to still be essential in our own culture. Those ppl going to Coachella these days are going as a fashion statement it ain’t about music.”
Overall, while it is a bit disheartening to see this, it certainly creates an interesting debate topic.
Coachella 2026 begins on Friday, April 10 will extend through that weekend, and then pick back up on the weekend of April 17-19.
