ALTer Ego 2026 Spotlights the Biggest Names in Rock to a Sold Out Crowd at the Kia Forum

This past Saturday night, some of the biggest names in alternative music hit the stage at the iconic Kia Forum in Los Angeles for iHeart Radio’s ALTer Ego concert, which launched back in 2018 with performances from major players like The Killers, Weezer, Billie Eilish, Coldplay, and others.

The concert felt like a mini festival in and of itself, starting promptly at 7:00 PM with an electric Cage The Elephant warming up the stage, and never letting its foot off the gas until 11:45 PM following a show-stopping performance from veteran rockers Green Day.

Radio concerts are an interesting concept: they almost always boast huge, impressive line-up names, but the demographic can swing all over the place, leading to an unpredictable vibe in the crowd that can often present as confused or uninterested. However, I was pretty optimistic going into the event for several reasons, including the fact that tickets had been sold out for months and resale tickets were going for $250 minimum just to get a seat in last few rows of the upper level: $450 if you wanted to nab a seat in the 100s.

It goes without saying that every attendee would have had their specific choice for which bands got x amount of time to perform over others, myself included, so I can hardly claim that “I wish Good Charlotte got an hour to play!” as a true critique of the festival. My only true feedback for next year is: BOOK MORE WOMEN!

For eight acts, the only female artists we saw perform were Gigi Perez and Jackie Miclau of Mt. Joy. I would have loved to see more alt. female on the lineup: Charlotte Sands, Wet Leg, or The Last Dinner Party all seem fitting, but I understand that this is a “don’t hate the player, hate the game” sort of thing that I wish could be solved more easily.

Check out photos and recaps from the evening below:

Cage The Elephant

almost monday

The last time I saw Almost Monday, they were playing Lollapalooza 2021. They also happen to be the first band I ever interviewed in person, face to face. Watching the band’s trajectory over the last 4+ years has been super fun as an early fan: they’ve since released their debut, full length album, DIVE, back in 2024, and have toured the world on their own and with artists like The Driver Era and most recently, The Band Camino.

The San Diego bred trio may still be pretty early on in their careers as musicians, (lead singer Dawson Daugherty commented that they listened to several of the bands on the lineup “throughout high school”), but their mark on indie and alternative music has been large: their 2024 single “can’t slow down” marked their first #1 at alt. radio last year and was also the #4 most streamed song on alt. radio in 2025.

With just about 20 minutes for their performance, almost monday hit the stage with zero time to waste, opening with “Jupiter,” a lesser known track from their album Dive, but a perfect song to represent the band’s laidback, beachside vibes, followed by “cough drops,” “lost,” and closing with “can’t slow down.”

A shorter set could be a perfect time for a concert goer to use the restroom or grab a beer, but almost monday made the most of their time allowed onstage to keep the energy up by playing all upbeat tracks, paired with fun visuals and plenty of opportunities to dance. If this performance was indicative of anything, it’s that almost monday’s future is bright.

Mt. Joy

Good Charlotte

I personally didn’t need any additional reason to get to Inglewood to see Good Charlotte, but the fact that this was the band’s first show in Los Angeles in TEN years had to have helped move some tickets. With roughly 30 minutes onstage, Good Charlotte had a pivotal spot in the lineup: they performed right after Mt. Joy, who had a more laidback, folksy sort of performance (on par with their music, of course), and it was also the time where the venue felt like it was finally at capacity: it was pretty full by the ticketed start time, but with the final act of the night, Green Day, not performing until 10:45 PM, it made sense logistically that most of the attendees were arriving a bit later into the evening.

I was the most excited for Good Charlotte, and it was evident that a lot of the attendees were as equally excited for the band’s set as me. Opening with “The Anthem,” which is also the band’s most streamed song to date, was a cathartic start to the set: it felt like every single person in The Forum knew the words. “The Anthem” just celebrated its 25th birthday this past October, along with other hits that Good Charlotte played, including “Girls & Boys” and “Lifestyles of The Rich & Famous.”

Despite releasing a new album just last year, Good Charlotte knew that their audience would want to hear the hits, only opting to perform “Rejects” from their 2025 album Motel Du Cap. However, they did bridge the cap by performing a couple songs from the 2007 album Good Morning Revival, including “I Don’t Wanna Be In Love (Dance Floor Anthem)” and “The River,” which may feel like super old music (it is), but only halfway through the band’s discography up until this point.

I personally would have loved to hear more throwbacks including “Little Things,” “I Just Wanna Leave,” and “Predictable,” but I’ll have to wait to see if the band decides to play those on their upcoming co-headlining tour with Avenged Sevenfold. I’ve only ever seen Good Charlotte once when I was in high school, and it was pretty impressive that the band members (who are all in their 40s now) sounded just as great live as they did 10+ years ago.

Gigi Perez

Gigi Perez, the 25-year-old singer/songwriter who skyrocketed to viral fame over the last couple years with her massive hit “Sailor Song” carried the weight of being the only female performer and only solo artist on the lineup Saturday night. You wouldn’t know by her laidback, quietly confident demeanor that she had one of the biggest songs of 2025 in “Sailor Song,” which spent 39 weeks on the Billboard Hot 100 and is currently approaching 1.7 billion streams on Spotify.

I first discovered Gigi Perez a few years ago (yes, doing the annoying thing where I call out finding someone before anyone else), and I got to see her perform at a small, less than 100 cap room in LA back in April 2023, and I knew that she would be a star. She has one of the most gripping, unique-sounding voices to come out of the alternative space in many years, and her openness when it comes to grief, loss, and queer identity has garnered her many fans around the world in a short amount of time.

With roughly twenty minutes onstage, Gigi Perez spent her set captivating the audience with her vocals: opening with “Please Be Rude,” into the nearly five-minute long “Chemistry,” one her more upbeat tracks that feels quintessentially “punk,” down to the drum beats and the building crescendo that comes with the hook. If fans didn’t know any of Gigi’s music besides “Sailor Song,” I could almost guarantee that this was the song that they looked up after her set ended.

The penultimate song “Sugar Water,” paired with an appearance from Perez’ younger sister, Bella Perez, shows a softer, more vulnerable side to Perez: singing about body image, the loss of innocence, and the tumultuous nature of transitioning from childhood to adulthood. What is more punk rock than that?

Sublime

Twenty One Pilots

Green Day

I am in a somewhat weird spot in terms of age groups to be a fan of Green Day: their first two albums came out before I was born (1991 and 1992), and I was first introduced to them when I was 10-years-old when the 2004 album American Idiot exploded in popularity and found a new generation of fans. But as pre-teens to, I made the band my entire personality, even coming up with an AOL screen name dedicated to the band, always wishing but never having the chance to see them perform live, my interest in punk music growing as an avid fan of artists like Good Charlotte and Simple Plan.

Despite seeing on average, nearly 100 performances a year in my adulthood, I still hadn’t seen Green Day. It’s pretty crazy that it took this long for it to happen, considering how often the band tours, but that’s just life, I guess. So when I heard they would be performing at ALTer Ego, I had to be there.

When the band took the stage, the energy shifted into the mindset of “Okay, this is definitely a Green Day concert sponsored by iHeart Radio with seven opening acts” and I mean that with no offense to any of the other artists whose music I love. The band’s star power was pulsating through the entire venue: no time wasted between the powerfully relevant “American Idiot” into “Holiday” into “Know Your Enemy” into “Boulevard of Broken Dreams,” a truly unmatched four-song run.

Green Day’s music has always been political, but hearing it over twenty years since its release felt even more powerful knowing that it’s still relevant, if not more. The band has been changing the lyric in “American Idiot” to “I’m not apart of a MAGA agenda” for awhile this point, but hearing it from one of the biggest bands in the world—who was also just announced as the artist to kick off the opening ceremony at the Super Bowl—gave me some hope that artists are willing to alienate fans in order to speak up on what they believe in. “We stand up with our brothers and sisters in Minnesota,” Billie Joe stated during the bridge of “Holiday,” calling it an “anti-fascism” and “anti-war” song before calling out Stephen Miller by name.

The rest of the band’s 45-minute performance boasted hits like “21 Guns,” “Basket Case,” and “Good Riddance (Time Of Your Life).” With massive songs spanning decades and generations of fans, it’s easy to see that Green Day is one of the best to ever do it, and has zero signs of stopping now.

Gallery images by Sarah Sturgis for Staged Haze

Header image by Rachel Kaplan for iHeartRadio