BottleRock 2026 highlights from Napa 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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.”

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 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’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 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.

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.

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.”