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Charli XCX, RÜFÜS DU SOL, Twenty One Pilots, Lorde and Skrillex Lead Austin City Limits 2026 Lineup
Austin City Limits marks its 25th anniversary with a 2026 lineup led by Charli XCX, RÜFÜS DU SOL, Twenty One Pilots, Lorde, Skrillex, Kings of Leon and The xx, signaling a broad snapshot of today’s festival economy.
Austin City Limits is treating its 25th anniversary like a full-scale survey of where festival culture sits right now: pop maximalism, indie legacy acts, dance-floor headliners and a heavy streaming-era middle class all sharing space across two weekends at Zilker Park.
Announced Tuesday morning (May 5), the 2026 ACL lineup is topped by Charli XCX, RÜFÜS DU SOL, Twenty One Pilots, Lorde, Skrillex (weekend one), Kings of Leon (weekend two) and The xx. The festival runs Oct. 2-4 and Oct. 9-11, with nine stages programmed across both weekends.
The top line alone says a lot about ACL’s current identity. Charli arrives in a post-Brat era where her festival sets now carry genuine headliner gravity. Lorde’s return to major U.S. festival billing feels equally significant, especially alongside The xx, whose booking taps into a different kind of millennial indie nostalgia than Kings of Leon’s arena-rock catalog. Skrillex, meanwhile, reflects ACL’s continued embrace of electronic music as prime-time programming rather than side-stage counterprogramming.
Below the headliners, the depth is where ACL looks most intentional. Turnstile, Labrinth, Lola Young, The Chainsmokers, Geese, Young Miko, Bleachers, SOFI TUKKER, Parcels, The War On Drugs and Leon Thomas are all on the bill, with Brandon Flowers scheduled for weekend one. Additional names include Blood Orange, Lykke Li, Suki Waterhouse, Amyl and the Sniffers, Snow Strippers, Cannons (weekend one), Steve Aoki, Jesse Welles, Fakemink, Saint Motel, Houndmouth (weekend two), Fcukers, Paris Paloma, LP, Natasha Bedingfield (weekend two) and Skye Newman.
ACL is also continuing to build out the surrounding festival infrastructure beyond the main-stage runs. The Bonus Tracks stage returns with interviews, podcast tapings, cooking demos and drag performances. Disney+ and Hulu will stream select performances and interviews from weekend one, with full broadcast scheduling expected later this summer.
On the tech side, this year introduces an in-app “Festival Persona” feature designed to match users’ Spotify history with the ACL lineup and generate a custom playlist. It’s an unsurprising move in 2026, but it also captures the broader shift in festival strategy: discovery is increasingly being framed as personalized data rather than accidental wandering.
Three-day GA, GA+, VIP and Platinum tickets go on sale today at 1 p.m. ET, with layaway plans available. One-day passes will be released at a later date. As in previous years, children eight and under can enter general admission areas free with a ticketed adult. The Austin Kiddie Limits lineup is expected later this summer.
