Hardly Strictly Bluegrass festival announces initial 2026 lineup

As summer comes to a close, San Francisco's music festival landscape comes to life. First with Outside Lands, then Portola, and finally the most attended and most free of them all: Hardly Strictly Bluegrass.

Now in its 26th year, the event takes over Golden Gate Park the weekend of Oct. 2-4 with multiple stages of music and attracts hundreds of thousands of attendees, with no ticket required. It was founded in 2001 by investment banker Warren Hellman, who created a foundation that still funds the event to this day. Although it was first known as Strictly Bluegrass, its cross-genre approach to booking led to a name change in the early aughts. Now you're just as likely to see a bluegrass titan like the Dry Branch Fire Squad as indie rockers like Courtney Barnett.

This year, Hardly Strictly is set to kick off with a warm-up evening honoring revered songwriter Steve Earle at the Masonic, featuring an all-star cast of performers that includes Earle himself, Buddy Miller, Elizabeth Cook, Emmylou Harris, Gillian Welch & David Rawlings, Jackson Browne, Hot Tuna, Molly Tuttle and many more.

The first wave of artists scheduled to play the festival proper includes the Bay Area mandolinist AJ Lee & Blue Summit, Durham folk stalwarts Hiss Golden Messenger, Canadian singer-songwriter Kathleen Edwards, indie Americana outfit My Morning Jacket and Grammy-winning string band Old Crow Medicine Show. Other musicians on the initial bill include Arabic Yemeni act El Khat, guitar pickers William Tyler & Yasmin Williams, and roots rockers John Craigie with the Coffis Brothers, plus Gillian Welch & David Rawlings doing double-duty. Many of the acts will perform "out of the park concerts" at Bay Area venues ranging from Molly Tuttle at the Stanford's Bing Concert Hall to John Craigie & Anna Moss at Great American Music Hall.

More waves of artists are expected to be announced in the coming months.

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