The Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival in Indio, California has been a fixed institution of music, festival, and general pop culture scene since 1999. From April 14th to 16th and April 21st to 23rd, visitors were offered an overwhelming variety of experiences. We have compactly summarized the peculiarities, innovations, and highlights for you! One of the biggest highlights of the festival was the diverse and international program. Because that was not always the case. Even in 1999, when the first Coachella festival took place, mainly white, male rock stars were on stage.
It’s all the more beautiful that this year’s program was as diverse and international as never before. More than half of the artists who performed in front of tens of thousands of fans in the California desert that weekend were not from the United States. For the first time, exclusively non-white headliners led the program: On Friday night, Puerto Rican reggaeton star Bad Bunny gave the last concert on the main stage. The 29-year-old has been setting records ever since and has been the most-streamed artist on Spotify for three years. Now, he was the first Spanish-speaking performer to receive a headliner slot at Coachella. On Saturday night, the K-Pop band Blackpink from South Korea followed, and on Sunday, the black American singer Frank Ocean. Other stars included Rosalía from Spain, Angèle from Belgium, Christine and the Queens from France, Björk from Iceland, Los Fabulosos Cadillacs from Argentina, Burna Boy from Nigeria, Diljit Dosanjh from India, and Ali Sethi from Pakistan. Also one of the most famous DJs from Germany, Boris Brechja played at Coachella and closed at the first weekend. The festival deliberately pursued a different strategy than, for example, the also world-famous British mass event in Glastonbury, which only offered male headliners in the summer of 2023 and was therefore heavily criticized.
