BottleRock 2026 highlights: Celebrity chaos meets '90s nostalgia during second day of the festival
BottleRock Napa Valley is back, bringing a sold-out Memorial Day weekend of music, food, wine and celebrity spectacle to downtown Napa.
The three-day festival runs Friday-Sunday, May 22-24, at the Napa Valley Expo, with more than 75 acts across five music stages and appearances on the Williams Sonoma Culinary Stage. This year's lineup is led by Foo Fighters, Backstreet Boys, Lorde, Teddy Swims, LCD Soundsystem and Sombr.
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Related: Lorde tells BottleRock fans her Napa set is the end of an era
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Read more: Teddy Swims crashes Papa Roach's BottleRock set for a nu-metal flashback
Gates open at 11:30 a.m. daily, with the final act scheduled to end at 10 p.m. Beyond the music, the festival includes Napa Valley food and wine vendors, cocktails, art installations, the Silent Disco, The Club, a LittleRockers family zone and BottleRock AfterDark shows around Wine Country and the Bay Area.
Follow along here for highlights, photos, crowd scenes and dispatches from the Napa Valley Expo throughout the weekend.
SATURDAY, MAY 23
Foo Fighters come back louder than ever
Foo Fighters returned to BottleRock with history on their side and the volume turned all the way up.
More Information
BottleRock Napa Valley 2026: 11:30 a.m.-10 p.m. Friday-Sunday, May 22-24. Napa Valley Expo, 575 Third St., Napa. Tickets are sold out; waitlist available at bottlerocknapavalley.com.
The band previously headlined the Napa festival in 2017 and again in 2021, when its set famously ran past the city's strict 10 p.m. curfew and the sound was cut during "Everlong." On Saturday, May 23, Dave Grohl and company stayed inside the lines - barely - while delivering a noisy, sweaty, gloriously messy headlining set on the Prudential Stage.
"We've been a band for 30 years," Grohl told the crowd. "We've got a lot of songs."
They proved it with a career-spanning set that included "My Hero," "This Is a Call," "Monkey Wrench," "Best of You" and "Everlong." Grohl also dedicated "Big Me" to his wife, Jordyn Blum, for her 50th birthday, calling it "my version of a happy birthday song."
The night had all the expected Foo Fighters ingredients: singalongs, screaming lessons, water dumped over Grohl's head, a blast of Motörhead's "Ace of Spades" and enough loose-end chaos to make the polished Wine Country festival feel briefly like a giant garage show.
LCD Soundsystem turns daylight into a dance-floor challenge
LCD Soundsystem's Saturday set was built for a dark room, a low ceiling and a crowd already halfway lost in the beat. Instead, James Murphy and company brought their twitchy, heavily electronic dance-rock to a bright afternoon field at BottleRock, where the setting sometimes worked against the music's after-hours pulse.
The band still found its way there. "I Can Change," "Home" and "North American Scum" pulled in pockets of dancers, while "Dance Yrself Clean" delivered the slow-build payoff fans were waiting for. By the time LCD closed with "All My Friends," the set had finally met the moment: a little out of place in the Napa sunshine, but still potent enough to make the field feel briefly like a club.
Rilo Kiley rewards the faithful on a quiet field
Rilo Kiley's reunion set deserved a bigger crowd than it got.
The beloved indie rock band, back on the road after years away, played Saturday to a field that looked surprisingly thin for a group with such deep millennial-era devotion. But for the fans who did show up, Jenny Lewis and company delivered a generous, emotionally loaded set that leaned into the band's catalog rather than simply chasing nostalgia.
"Silver Lining," "With Arms Outstretched" and "Portions for Foxes" all made appearances, turning the set into a reminder of how sharply Rilo Kiley once captured anxiety, ambition, bitterness and escape. It was not one of the day's biggest scenes, but it may have been one of its most quietly satisfying.
Joan Jett keeps it fast, fierce and familiar
Joan Jett & the Blackhearts wasted little time reminding BottleRock why some rock songs never really leave circulation.
Jett's Saturday set was lean and efficient, moving from Runaways-era cuts like "Cherry Bomb" and "You Drive Me Wild" to the hits that made her one of rock's most enduring no-frills icons. "I Hate Myself for Loving You," "I Love Rock 'n' Roll" and "Bad Reputation" all landed with the blunt-force reliability of songs built for festival fields.
Not everything worked. A cover of Sly and the Family Stone's "Everyday People" felt stiff, especially at a Bay Area festival where the original carries extra weight. But Jett's core appeal remains intact: black leather, hard downstrokes, zero fuss.
Gavin Rossdale crashes the crowd during nostalgic set
Bush delivered exactly the kind of hard-rock nostalgia trip BottleRock's millennial crowd came for during its Saturday afternoon set on the T-Mobile Stage.
Gavin Rossdale, the band's lead singer and lone original member, prowled the stage like it was still Bush's mid-'90s heyday, leading fans through a string of hits that opened with "Machinehead." Even the post-grunge band's slower tracks, including "Swallowed" and "Glycerine," sparked singalongs across the packed festival field.
But the standout moment came during "Flowers on a Grave," when Rossdale leaped offstage and charged deep into the VIP section, weaving through the crowd and climbing to the VIP viewing deck while pausing between lyrics to snap selfies with fans. It was as if the last three decades had barely touched the 60-year-old musician, whose energy and frontman swagger carried him through the hourlong set.
And he's not done yet. Rossdale is scheduled to help kick off the festival's final day on the Williams Sonoma Culinary Stage alongside TV personality and chef Antoni Porowski and Hilary Knight, the five-time Olympic medalist and captain of the U.S. women's national ice hockey team.
Uncle Jesse goes off script
John Stamos may have walked out onto the BottleRock Williams Sonoma Culinary Stage on Saturday afternoon to the "Full House" theme song, but the actor, who famously played Uncle Jesse on the San Francisco-set family sitcom, quickly made it clear that his participation would be NSFW.
"I'm getting an erection," he proclaimed, while slow dancing with actor-comedian Adam Devine.
"He's not lying," Devine confirmed for the crowd.
Stamos later suggestively bent over while Philip Rosenthal of "Somebody Feed Phil" put a glove on to help chef Eddie Chavez make tacos.
Chef Masaharu Morimoto then entered the stage and gathered the crew to assemble a 15-foot sushi roll.
The set concluded with a drum battle between Stamos, actor-comedian Fred Armisen, who was dressed like a Ramone, and Green Day drummer Tré Cool.
BottleRock gets weird with Saxsquatch
Saxsquatch - musician Dean Mitchell performing in a Sasquatch costume - drew an especially lively and amused crowd Saturday afternoon, playing several popular covers, including Pitbull's "Hotel Room Service" and Rick Astley's "Never Gonna Give You Up."
His wife, dubbed Thic Foot, even joined him onstage in costume to dance to Chappell Roan's "Hot To Go!" At one point, Saxsquatch stepped into the crowd to play, and his set ended on a peculiar note: "The Chicken Dance."
FRIDAY, MAY 22
Lorde turns headlining set into a farewell
Lorde closed BottleRock's first night with a sweeping, intimate set that doubled as a farewell to the current chapter of her tour.
"It is the very last time we will do this show," she told the crowd. "This is a bittersweet moment for everyone on this stage but it's joyful too. The change in the air really has a special feeling."
The New Zealand singer-songwriter moved through a career-spanning set that included "Royals," "Buzzcut Season," "Team" and "Green Light," along with newer material. Before "Liability," she paused for a piano-backed reflection on time and presence: "There is so much to look forward to but we are here right now," she said. "This is the magic. This is what we remember."
She ended with "David," which she performed after moving into the crowd, giving the night the feeling of a closing ceremony.
Earlier Friday, Lorde's sister Indy opened the main stage, marking her first festival appearance and giving the day an unusual family bookend.
Read the full review.
Men at Work brings the '80s singalong
Men at Work gave Friday a breezy '80s detour, with Colin Hay leading the Australian band through a set that built toward the obvious crowd-pleasers.
The group mixed deeper cuts and Hay's solo material with the songs most of the BottleRock crowd came to hear, including "Overkill," "It's a Mistake," "Who Can It Be Now?" and "Down Under." By the time the flute riff hit on "Down Under," the set had turned into one of the day's easiest singalongs - a sunny Wine Country throwback tucked between the festival's pop, soul and nu-metal extremes.
Jimmy Butler does Vanessa Carlton karaoke on the culinary stage
Jimmy Butler came to BottleRock to promote his Bigface Coffee brand, but he ended up giving fans one of its most delightfully off-brand Friday moments.
Appearing with Teddy Swims and host Liam Mayclem, the Golden State Warriors wing forward broke into karaoke, choosing Vanessa Carlton's early-2000s piano-pop anthem "A Thousand Miles."
The performance was loose, goofy and fully in the spirit of the Williams Sonoma Culinary Stage, where the point is less culinary precision than star-studded spontaneity. Asked by Mayclem whether he planned to return as a BottleRock headliner next year, Butler shut down the idea immediately.
"Hell, no," he said.
Teddy Swims crashes Papa Roach's set for ‘Scars'
Teddy Swims had just finished his hourlong main stage set when he made a surprise appearance with Papa Roach at the nearby T-Mobile Stage.
"Hey, how was your show?" Papa Roach frontman Jacoby Shaddix asked as Swims walked onstage. "I'm sure you killed it."
"This is the show I wanna do, my man," Swims replied.
The two launched into "Scars," Papa Roach's aching 2004 hit from "Getting Away With Murder," with Shaddix's rasp cutting against Swims' big, soulful voice. The pairing worked better than it had any obvious right to and became one of Friday's best crossover moments.
Swims, who previously played BottleRock before becoming one of its headliners, returned Friday sounding fully promoted. His Prudential Stage set moved across gospel, country-soul, blues-rock and pop, with songs including "The Door," "Some Things I'll Never Know" and "Guilty," plus a Van Halen cover of "Jump."
Read the full review.
Papa Roach brings Vacaville grit to Wine Country
Papa Roach gave BottleRock's first night a jolt of hometown-adjacent chaos, reminding the Napa crowd that the band started less than 30 miles away.
"If you don't know, we're from a small town called Vacaville, a little cow town down the way," he said. "We were just four or five kids with a dream thinking we could do this, and look at us, man. We started this in 1993 and we're still getting up here and having the time of our lives."
The set included "Getting Away With Murder," "Leave a Light On (Talk Away the Dark)," "Between Angels and Insects" and "Last Resort," along with a cover segment Shaddix dubbed the "Nu-Metal Time Machine," featuring pieces of Korn, Deftones, Limp Bizkit and System of a Down songs. It was a compressed Warped Tour flashback dropped into a festival better known for cabernet, culinary demos and VIP cabanas.
Chaka Khan turns the afternoon into a singalong
Chaka Khan brought a deep catalog and effortless command to Friday's lineup, giving BottleRock one of its most purely joyful early-evening sets.
The funk and R&B legend leaned into both solo hits and Rufus favorites, including "Sweet Thing," "Through the Fire," "Tell Me Something Good," "I Feel for You," "I'm Every Woman" and "Ain't Nobody."
For a festival that often thrives on generational overlap, Khan's set worked as a reminder that some catalogs do not require rediscovery. They simply need a crowd, a groove and enough daylight left for everyone to dance.
Natasha Bedingfield delivers the inevitable ‘Unwritten' moment
Natasha Bedingfield's Friday set built toward the moment everyone knew was coming.
The British pop singer moved through "Love Like This," "Pocketful of Sunshine" and "These Words," mixing bright 2000s pop with a few unexpected turns, including snippets and covers that nodded to Kate Bush, Portishead, Coldplay and the Cranberries.
But "Unwritten" was the destination. Two decades after its release, the song has become both millennial memory trigger and cross-generational festival bait thanks to Glen Powell's leading man in the 2023 rom-com "Anyone but You." At BottleRock, it did exactly what it was supposed to do: turn a field full of strangers into a mass chorus.
Dave Grohl joins Chevy Metal for a covers blowout
Dave Grohl made his first major Friday splash at BottleRock not with Foo Fighters, who headline Saturday, but with Chevy Metal, the covers band founded by late Foo Fighters drummer Taylor Hawkins.
After Hawkins' death in 2022, his son, Shane Hawkins has taken over on drums, joining founding bassist Wiley Hodgden and guitarist Brent Woods.
Chevy Metal tore through a classic rock-heavy set that included songs by the Rolling Stones, Rush, Talking Heads, Led Zeppelin, the Police, the Knack, Black Sabbath, David Bowie, Thin Lizzy, Joe Walsh and Van Halen.
Grohl's appearance gave the set the feel of a warm-up party for Saturday's Foo Fighters headlining slot, with the loose energy of musicians playing songs they clearly love rather than preserving any festival mystique.
Tré Cool opens the day with the Chin Chins
Green Day drummer Tré Cool was part of BottleRock's opening-day action, joining the Chin Chins, the new band featuring his wife, Sara Rose.
The set marked the group's first festival appearance and gave early arrivals a small but notable Bay Area rock connection before the day's bigger names took over the grounds.
For a festival that often stacks celebrity cameos and surprise appearances across the weekend, it was a fitting start that was casual, familial and just a little unexpected.
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Børns pulls out all the tricks
Børns brought equal parts charm, goofiness and singalong-ready hits to BottleRock, turning his sunset set on the HelloFresh Stage into one of the festival's breeziest crowd-pleasers.
The singer revealed that he had downed a flight of red wine before taking the stage and was "feeling real good" by showtime, a vibe that carried through his playful performance. Leaning into this quirky side, Børns pretended to puke up a deck of cards before launching into a few card tricks between. But the loudest moments came when the crowd joined him for soaring renditions of "Past Lives" and the euphoric closer "Electric Love."
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This story was originally published May 22, 2026 at 7:13 PM.