A Bonnaroo 2026 Review
This is an honest reflection of how I felt returning to The Farm after last year’s devastating cancellation. Like many of you, I returned carefully. And like many of you, a lot of my usual festival family group didn’t return this year. Some attendees arrived for the first time, untouched by the previous year’s grief. And somehow… all of those versions of love existed under the same sky.
What does it mean to return to a place you love after it has left you disappointed?
Returning to Bonnaroo this year was reminiscent of returning to a family home after something painful and awkward had happened there. The Farm was still wide and familiar, full of the same roads, campsites, landmarks, and little rituals that have made it feel like home for so many of us. Yet I arrived carrying last year with me. The 2025 cancellation left behind a collective heartbreak: people packing up wet campsites, changing travel plans, saying goodbye too soon, and trying to make sense of a weekend that had barely begun.
Bonnaroo has always felt like family to me, and family can hold so much love alongside disappointment. Maybe that is why returning felt emotional. I was not expecting the Farm to erase what happened. I just wanted to know what it would feel like to stand there again, with the remnants of heartbreak still sitting quietly in the corners of my mind.
The ripple effect of absence
Last year, I arrived with a festival family of more than twenty people, many of them Bonnaroo veterans. This year, our campsite held five of us, and only one other friend had been to The Farm before. That difference became one of the first absences I felt when I returned.
Usually, Bonnaroo begins long before the gates open. It lives in the group chats, the packing lists, the shared playlists, the questions about who is bringing the canopy and who is somehow in charge of our meals and snacks. This year, so many of those familiar voices stayed home. I understood why. Heartbreak does not move through a community in one clean wave. Some people needed distance from the place that hurt them. Some could not justify the cost or the uncertainty. Some may have wanted to return, yet found that the people they usually send it with were no longer ready.
At Shot-gun-a-roo, I FaceTimed friends who were not there, and later I received texts from people watching from home with a particular kind of FOMO. Their absence did not mean they had stopped loving Bonnaroo. It meant they were carrying last year differently.
A smaller Roo was both bittersweet and beautiful
My festival family was not the only group that had grown smaller this year. Bonnaroo intentionally reduced capacity by closing off campsites that had been most affected by last year’s flooding, and the difference could be felt almost immediately.
Getting onto The Farm felt easier. Moving through Centeroo did not feel like such a quest; navigating the crowd and moving between stages was a means to an end, rather than a challenge in itself, as it had been during the more crowded Roos I have attended in the past. There was room to wander without feeling overstimulated by the sea of people, room to sit down without feeling swallowed by the bouncing crowd, and room to let a sidequest urge overtake your body without feeling overwhelmed by how you’re going to get out of the pit.
The quieter corners carried their own tenderness, too… Empty space can make absence visible. Yet it also gave the Farm a sense of relief I had not expected, as though everyone who did return had a little more room to breathe. Perhaps fewer people may reflect lingering hesitation and lower trust, all while a small crowd also made the experience gentler, easier, and more breathable.
I also appreciated that Bonnaroo created space for attendees to share feedback after last year, then showed signs of actually listening. The reduced capacity and changes to the campground footprint felt like an apology to the concerns people raised after the cancellation, especially around flooding and the realities of moving through The Farm. A post-festival survey cannot undo a difficult year on its own, but seeing parts of that feedback reflected in the 2026 experience eased a lot of my personal anxiety and uncertainties.
I think it’s not about declaring whether the smaller attendance was “good” or “bad.” Part of maturing is allowing space to hold both truths: the absence was felt, and the room it created made the weekend more comfortable.
The sky still held memory
Of course, the sky still had its own memory to carry. Returning to the farm every year since 2023, I have never known a Bonnaroo without rain. Usually, it feels woven into the Farm’s experience: a sudden downpour, a muddy walk back to camp, strangers huddled beneath a canopy while the clouds pass. This year, every forecast carried a little more… weight. A darkening sky could pull last year close again, reminding us how quickly a weekend built around joy, planning, and anticipation can shift into uncertainty. Rain has become part of the emotional landscape of Bonnaroo, weather is never just weather. It is memory, vulnerability, and the strange act of choosing to stay present anyway.
Bonnaroo’s diversity is its actual magic
That is the gift of Bonnaroo, though: no two people ever leave The Farm carrying the exact same weekend. Even within our little crew of five, we experienced Bonnaroo according to our intrinsic desires, splitting off for the sets that called to us and reconvening later with sunburned shoulders, muddy shoes, and stories from opposite ends of Centeroo. It was cute witnessing the new Roovians be brave and wander to a different stage than the rest of us all on their own!
Of course, I stayed on the EDM side. Please do not make me choose a favorite… I loved every set I caught! Instead, I’ll highlight a few of my most memorable moments from the EDM world.
EazyBaked plays on Day 0 as the surprise guest at Plaza 5
EAZYBAKED gave Bonnaroo an early dose of bass as the surprise headliner for Day 0 at Groop Plaza 5. Before the full festival weekend had even begun, the duo turned the campground into a late-night launchpad for the Roo magic ahead.
Skrillex’s return to the farm plus a surprise Skrillex b2b IsoKnock set
Skrillex’s previous Bonnaroo appearance was in 2014, when he played his own set and also led a huge, genre-spanning SuperJam with artists including Janelle Monáe, Warpaint, Chance the Rapper, Thundercat, Zedd, and more. His 2026 booking marked his return to The Farm after that long gap.
After taking the main stage, Skrillex played a ‘secret’ set at The Other stage for a b2b2b with ISOxo and Knock2. There was something especially sweet about seeing ISOxo and Knock2 up there with an artist who shaped so many of our early relationships with dubstep. It reminded me of the TikTok trend where people share a photo from when they first started listening to Skrillex beside a current photo of themselves finally seeing him at a festival. Watching ISOxo and Knock2 play alongside Skrillex felt like witnessing that same full-circle feeling onstage: our younger selves, our current selves, and the next generation all meeting in the same moment, dancing to music that feels familiar while still making room for something new.
GRiZ, RKS, a free falling full-circle moment
In 2023, GRiZ stepped into Rainbow Kitten Surprise’s canceled Saturday slot with a Chasing the Golden Hour set and closed it with his unreleased “It’s Called: Freefall” remix. Three years later, Ela Melo joined him on The Farm for the song’s live return.
Hearing “Freefall” again, surrounded by different people and a different version of myself, felt like a reminder that time moves in spirals. The music stays with us. We keep growing around it.
Maybe freefalling is not always about going down. Maybe it is about returning to a place as the person you have become, recognizing the old feeling in your chest, and realizing that some moments were always going to find their way back to you.
Techno mommy – Sara Landry plays in the rain
Techno was not always my favorite, but lately, I have found myself reaching for it more and more. You know what they say: all roads lead to techno. Hehehe.
When I saw Sara Landry on the lineup, I knew I had to catch her set. Lo and behold, during her set it started raining. As the lasers caught the falling rain, every drop turned to glitter above the crowd. It was loud, hypnotic, a little spiritual, and completely unforgettable.
Somewhere in the middle of it all, I looked around and thought, damn… I really like techno.
One last time, LSZEE
LSZEE returned to The Farm for one last Bonnaroo chapter. After the 2025 weather cancellation interrupted their planned appearance, LSDREAM and CloZee came back for what Bonnaroo billed as the project’s final festival performance, giving their shared world a full-circle farewell beneath the Tennessee sky.
A moment for those cancelled EDM sets 🙁
I was really looking forward to catching Motifv and A Hundred Drums, but both of their Sunday sets were cut from the lineup because of the rain and lightning, causing Centeroo to be closed for the majority of the day. They each handled the cancellation with so much grace and positivity. Here’s hoping Bonnaroo brings them back next year for the redemption sets they deserve! Check out their heart felt Instagram posts about the Roo cancellation.
I kept overhearing first-timers talk about seeing The Farm for the first time, and there was something awww-s’-cute about living vicariously through watching that wide-eyed wonder unfold. Their excitement reminded me that Bonnaroo still has the power to surprise people, even those of us who arrive carrying years of memories and expectations.
The magic has never been that everyone sees the same festival. Bonnaroo is more like a prism: thousands of people enter with the same light around them, then leave radiating different colors. A prism does not create light from nothing. It reveals the colors already inside it. On The Farm, those colors might look like a sunrise set, an indie band, a dubstep set, a long-awaited reunion, or the first time someone realizes they have found their people.
Loving the Farm enough to ask more of it
Watching first-timers fall in love with Bonnaroo reminded me why people keep returning, even after a difficult year. That wonder is real. So are the reasons longtime attendees arrive with more questions than they once did. Bonnaroo is a place built around community, music, and moments that feel impossible to replicate anywhere else, and it also exists inside a live music industry shaped by rising costs, corporate decisions, changing festival habits, and the pressure to keep people spending. Those currents can be felt in the details: the price of a ticket, the quality of amenities, the choices made around camping, programming, and what attendees are asked to accept.
In some strange, tangled way, a festival becomes a temporary version of society itself. This could honestly be a whole other article in itself, so apologies, I digress! As attendees and patrons of the festival, we can feel how broader societal changes, including the effects of inflation, shape our access, comfort, safety, and ability to participate. We can feel the tension between community and commerce, between what people need and what they are expected to tolerate. With enough reflection, some of the frustrations we carry through the gates may point beyond the Farm to the larger systems we move through every day.
Wanting Bonnaroo to improve does not make someone jaded. It can come from loving the Farm deeply enough to care about the people who return year after year, the first-timers arriving with open hearts, and the community that makes the festival matter beyond a lineup poster. The magic is still there. It deserves care, accountability, and room to grow alongside the people who keep bringing it to life.
Love, in a different shape
Bonnaroo 2026 did not wipe clean what happened the year before, and I don’t think it needed to… The heartbreak was still there in the smaller campsites, in the friends who stayed home, and in the way we watched the clouds with a little more caution than before. Yet this time around, the festival made room for something new: fresh memories beside the old ones, first-timer wonder alongside veteran hesitation, and the familiar feeling of music drawing people into the same present moment.
Maybe learning to love The Farm again is less about asking it to return to exactly what it was. Maybe it is about meeting it where it is, carrying the memory of what hurt, and staying open to what can still grow there. We watched the sky. We danced anyway. And somewhere between the rain, the reunion texts, the sunrise sets, and the muddy walk back to camp, I remembered that love can come back in a different shape and still feel like home.
With lots of love and light,
Liezl