Staged Haze Takes Riot Fest 2026: Music Legends, Nostalgic Sets, and a Whole Lot of Mud

It’s a lot of work to put together a music festival lineup, and schedule each one of the acts in their own time slot. But all of that work was thrown in the trash this past weekend at Riot Fest, thanks to the weather. Bad weather and music festivals seem to go hand in hand in cities like Chicago, but the rain over the past weekend was one for the books, and left one day of the three-day festival ending early, and another one starting late, shifting around set times, reducing a lot of sets and cancelling some acts altogether.

The Chicago-based festival, which ran from Sept. 18-20, figured it out, for the most part, even though it left its venue, Douglass Park, a muddy ocean by the end of its third day, and gave attendees a chance to see arguably the festival’s most varied lineup in its 21-year history.
Riot Fest started off as a mostly punk music (and all of its various subgenres) festival, but as the fest has grown over the years, it’s also expanded its lineup, and who is included in it. This year, it featured hip hop legends like Nas, who headlined on Saturday night, to alt-rock icon Alanis Morissette on Sunday, and of course, what would Riot Fest be without a whole host of punk bands and performers, like Bratmobile, Rise Against, the Sex Pistols, Iggy Pop and Patti Smith.

FRIDAY

Akaline Trio

Photos by Anthony Linh Nguyen for Riot Fest

If you’ve been to Riot Fest enough, and are from Chicago, and are an Alkaline Trio fan, there’s a good chance that you’ve seen the band countless times. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen the band—but I still will never pass up a chance, this year included, and Alkaline Trio’s hometown set was a great way to kick off Riot Fest. The band’s guitar player and co-vocalist Matt Skiba had medical issues earlier this year, and the band had to cancel several tour dates, so it was great to see that he’s recovering enough to be able to play, and play well. Every time that Alkaline Trio plays in Chicago, it’s as if they know that their crowd is longtime hometown fans, and they always play sets that any old-school fan would be thrilled by, like “Snake Oil Tanker,” from the band’s 1998 EP For Your Lungs Only, “Warbrain,” and closing with “Radio,” off of 2000’s Maybe I’ll Catch Fire.

All American Rejects

Photos by Rachel Zyzda for Riot Fest

For anyone nostalgic about mid-to-late-2000s pop-punk and emo, Riot Fest is like a dream come true. Year after year, the festival books artists that millennial attendees grew up on and have deep nostalgia for, like The All-American Rejects. And the band, who formed in Oklahoma in 1999, acknowledged that. Early in the band’s set, frontman Tyson Ritter said “Do you want to go back in time with the Rejects?” When a majority of the crowd screamed in response, he joked “I guess we can forget about playing our new shit.” The band played a lot of older songs for the nostalgia crowd, like “Swing Swing,” “It Ends Tonight” and “Dirty Little Secret.” Proving that Ritter was joking, they also played new songs, like “King Kong,” off of the band’s fifth album, Sandbox, released earlier this year. When they weren’t playing, Ritter was exceedingly entertaining by just saying whatever random things popped into his head — like asking how the rich attendees in the festival’s VIP section were doing, and then leading the general admission crowd in a chant of “Peasants! Peasants!” The band’s exuberant music, and Ritter’s onstage antics made The All-American Rejects’ set one of the most fun to be found all of Riot Fest weekend.

Pixies

Photos by Anthony Linh Nguyen for Riot Fest

I’ve seen the Pixies a lot. The band’s 20-year anniversary tour for their 1989 album, Doolittle, was the first concert that I ever drove to after getting my license. I begged someone to take my shift when I worked at a pizza place in high school so I could make it to their show at The Rave in Milwaukee. I saw them almost every time they hit Chicago or Milwaukee throughout college and beyond, including last year at the Salt Shed. I can say sincerely that seeing the Pixies at Riot Fest was kind of like seeing them all of the other times that I’ve seen them, but it’s pretty telling that it’s a decision that I continue to make. The band usually plays the same assortment of songs (the surf version of “Wave of Mutilation,” “Vamos,” “Mr. Grieves”)—sure there are some slight differences from tour to tour, but nothing major. They also sound exactly the same whenever you see them, in the best possible way. It’s kind of shocking how great Black Francis continues to sound live. For the most part, if you’ve seen one Pixies show, you’ve seen them all—but like a perfect movie that you want to watch over and over, it’s a great thing to see time and time again.

Twenty One Pilots

Photos by Rachel Zyzda for Riot Fest

SATURDAY

Public Image LTD

Photos by Anthony Linh Nguyen for Riot Fest

Due to the early end time for bands on Saturday, most of the artist’s set times were shortened, including Public Image Ltd., one of the first-ever post-punk bands that formed in London 1978. The shortened set time, which was condensed down to just 20 minutes, was something that definitely pissed off Public Image Ltd. frontman John Lydon (also known as Johnny Rotten, the frontman of the Sex Pistols). When the band finished playing “Rise,” only the third song in their set, and final, Lydon said “Are you really going to cut us that short? You fucking Riot Fest dicks. Think of what you’ve missed.” Luckily for fans of the group, Public Image Ltd. has plenty of tour dates in the United States through the rest of 2026, as well as in early 2027, where they will hopefully be allotted more time than 20 minutes.

PUP

Photos by Anthony Linh Nguyen for Riot Fest

The fun thing about festivals is the ability to both see artists that you love, and new bands and performers that you’ve never heard of before. I can acknowledge that I’m seriously late on Pup, but the Canadian pop-punk band was one of the best discoveries that I made over the weekend. During the band’s 50-minute set, they played through their 2016 album, The Dream Is Over, an album that I have not stopped playing since seeing the band’s enthralling performance. Starting with album opener “If This Tour Doesn’t Kill You, I Will,” the band sang about the realities of living the dream in a professional rock band—and how sometimes that dream can make you absolutely miserable.

The band is pretty great live—raw, gritty and full of energy, and I instantly fell in love with the deeply relatable music, including the song “Sleep in the Heat,” written by Pup’s frontman Stefan Babcock about the death of his pet chameleon, Norman. It’s a love song, and a heartbreak song, and one that left me sobbing during the festival, because my best friend and beloved dog of 14 years passed away a few months ago, breaking my heart in the process. I didn’t expect to cry at Riot Fest this year, but sometimes you just have to let it out, and Pup gave me the perfect opportunity to do that. I love you, Bane!

Morrissey

Photos by Rachel Zyzda for Riot Fest

In 2021, Morrissey took the stage at Riot Fest, played “How Soon Is Now?” by his former band, The Smiths, and then said “We are all slaves.” That was enough for me—I heard him play a great song, and then say something stupid. If only he had cancelled the rest of his set after that, I would have had the whole Morrissey experience. So my hopes weren’t high for the British singer’s Saturday performance. Many members of the crowd expected the notoriously crotchety singer to cancel altogether after the weather delays, because if he’s known for anything beyond his decades of music and oftentimes saying something pretty ridiculous, it’s cancelling shows.

But, to the surprise of many, Morrissey took the stage, even with the shortened set time, and tore through 10 songs. I’m admittedly not a big fan of the singer. A lot of my closest friends are, and I’ve spent years trying to understand why. The show on Saturday sort of gave me some insight into that, as he played some of The Smiths’ classics, like “There Is A Light That Never Goes Out,” and “Shoplifters of the World Unite,” as well as several of his own songs that have taken hold in the hearts of his many impassioned fans that were at the show, like “Jack the Ripper,” and “First of the Gang to Die.” When he wasn’t singing, Morrissey was shockingly funny, addressing his many concert cancellations by saying “I’m pleased to be here. I’m pleased to be alive—it’s a miracle,” and addressing his shortened set time by joking “We have to be very quick tonight or else I get my face kicked in—which I’m used to.” He was silly, and seemed to be having a lot of fun, which has really shaken my understanding of Morrissey as this outlandish, self-serious figure, and given me a bit of insight into the intense devotion that I saw on Saturday.

Bright Eyes

Photos by Rachel Zyzda for Riot Fest

After the day was shortened and all the set times were changed, the day’s schedule was all a bit confusing. Bright Eyes, who were supposed to play on a different stage at an earlier time, were now headlining the festival’s Radical Stage, and playing from 6:30 p.m. until the festival’s end, at 7 p.m. But the Radical Stage was empty, except for guitar techs, at 6:30 p.m., and at 6:40 p.m., but finally at around 6:45 p.m., frontman and songwriter Conor Oberst and the rest of his band stepped on stage and immediately burst into “An Attempt to Tip the Scales,” off of the band’s 2000 album Fevers and Mirrors. The band’s thoughtful and well-performed set spanned much of the band’s history. During the show Oberst addressed the band’s absence from the 2024 Riot Fest, after Bright Eyes cancelled the remainder of their 2024 tour dates, including a stop at the festival, due to Oberst’s vocal problems, as well as the miserable impending weather, with Oberst saying “It’s really happening, I didn’t think it would happen.”

SUNDAY

The Beths

Photos by Anthony Linh Nguyen for Riot Fest

The Beths have been one of my most-loved bands since 2020. Sick of being cooped up due to the pandemic, and desperate to go on a dream trip to New Zealand, I searched “New Zealand music” online, and found this wonderful indie pop band from Auckland. I’ve tried to see them several times since then, but it’s never worked out, and when the Riot Fest was delayed on Sunday, I thought that this was going to be another time when it just didn’t work out. Thankfully, it did, because The Beths’ set was joyful, exuberant, fun and one of the absolute highlights of the festival weekend for me. The Beths played an 11-song set filled with circle pits “filled with love,” where fans held hands as they moshed into one another, and took time to joke with the crowd throughout, while adding that Chicago feels like “a second home” for them, because of how well they’re always treated.

Cartel

Photos by Anthony Linh Nguyen for Riot Fest

When you’re standing out in the cold rain, ankle-deep in mud, it can be a pretty cold and miserable experience. Or, it can be really fun. During Cartel’s Sunday set at Riot Fest, it was the latter. Cartel, a pop-punk band from Atlanta, took the bad weather in stride, and the crowd followed suit, throwing beach balls around and dancing throughout the band’s entire 30-minute set. The band spent its 30 minutes well, playing songs that ranged throughout its career, from some of their best known material off of 2005’s “Chroma,” like “Burn This City” and set closer “Say Anything (Else),” to one of the band’s newest songs, “Constants,” off of the band’s new album, Learning How to Cope. There was a somber moment during Cartel’s performance, as the band took time to acknowledge the passing of Chad Gilbert, the founding guitarist and backing vocalist for New Found Glory who died after a years-long battle with cancer that morning, saying that “[Cartel] would not exist without New Found Glory.” But, they also said that Gilbert loved live music, and would want to see the crowd, and the band having fun — which they certainly did.

This is Lorelei

Photos by Rachel Zyzda for Riot Fest

Tucked away on the Rebel Stage while Riot Fest mainstays Taking Back Sunday and punk rock legend Patti Smith were both playing on other stages, it’s easy to imagine how This Is Lorelei’s set could have been overshadowed. Helmed by Nate Amos of the Chicago-based indie pop band Water From Your Eyes, This is Lorelei is a band that I haven’t been able to stop listening to since its debut, the 2024 release Box for Buddy, Box for Star, one of the most dynamic albums that spans various genres and features truly great songwriting. The band’s terrific set featured songs from that album, as well as This Is Lorelei’s most recent release, The Singer in My Band, which came out only nine days before the band took the Riot Fest stage.

Alanis Morissette

Photos by Rachel Zyzda for Riot Fest

If any other artist at Riot Fest started their set with a video montage going over some of their career highlights, it would have felt a little bit ridiculous. But for Alanis Morissette, it just made her impending performance all the more exciting. The Canadian alt-rock singer took the stage for her one hour set on Sunday night, where a massive crowd stood in an ocean of mud, dancing and singing along as Morissette played 11 of her most beloved songs, from the kickoff track “Hand in My Pocket,” to “You Learn,” to presumably the entire crowd screaming along with “You Oughta Know.” Four decades into her career, Morisette’s voice sounds as incredible, and powerful as ever, and she put on an impressive show where she seemed to never stop moving throughout her entire set.

I was planning on staying after Alanis Morissette played, and seeing Twin Peaks, but by that point, the sea of mud that had overtaken Douglass Park was too overwhelming. I was shivering, all of my clothes were soaked through due to the rain, and my feet and legs were covered in mud. I felt a little bad, but I also think that I left at the right time. I had also just wrapped up seeing Alanis Morissette play what felt like a headlining set—and how could it not feel like that? This word gets thrown around a lot, but Morissette is truly an icon, and she has so many hits that span her career that her set felt like a greatest hits performance. It’s baffling to me that she was not one of the headliners that night, and that Riot Fest thought that they could follow her performance up.

Check out our previous festival coverage HERE.