The Stagecoach 2026 lineup could drop this week. Here’s who we predict will be on it

It’s the first full week of September which means we here at Desert Sun headquarters have fall (we’re thinking optimistically, ok?), football and Stagecoach on the brain.

Wait… Stagecoach? Isn’t that in April? Yes, but this has become the week when our fair desert’s second most famous music festival often drops its highly anticipated lineup poster.

If recent practice holds, the festival will drop a punny post teasing one of the artists on the lineup on social media sometime this week and then publish the full list a day or two later.

But while we can’t say for sure if it will happen that way this year (Coachella sure threw us for a loop when its lineup dropped several weeks earlier than normal last year), that won’t stop us from dusting off our cowboy boots and throwing out some (not-so) educated guesses about who will be on the eventual lineup for your reading pleasure and ridicule.

Why listen to our Stagecoach 2026 lineup predictions?

OK, so we like to keep things humble around here, but we actually called all three headliners and had a 50% overall accuracy rate in our predictions last year. That could mean we’ll fail miserably to get anything right this year, but enough throat-clearing, here’s our picks:

More: Stagecoach 2026: Think you can predict the lineup? It could earn you free passes

If the 2026 lineup were to have any hope of outdoing 2025’s star-studded one, it had better include the 32-year-old bad boy from Tennessee that has become pretty much the indisputable biggest star in country music over the last few years. Wallen was already on top of the cowboy world when he played the closing night of the festival in 2024. But his star has only shone brighter in the year-plus since, with his new album, “I’m The Problem,” boasting an array of inescapable hits such as “Love Somebody” and “Just in Case” that have made it by far the biggest seller of the year so far — in any genre. In fact, Wallen has gotten so big that the question seems to be not whether Stagecoach would want to have him back so soon (hint: they def would) but if it would even be worth it to him to take time away from his own songwriting, megatour and everything else he has going on his own to play the festival at this point?

OK, yes, our prediction of an appearance by the 33-year-old “Heart Like a Truck” singer on last year’s lineup was one of the small handful we got wrong. But we’re not afraid to double down: Wilson, who less than four years ago was playing the tiny Sirius XM Spotlight Stage in an early afternoon time slot, has only continued her meteoric rise over the past few months with a successful new album (“Whirlwind”), more big hits (“4X4XU” and the recent “Somewhere Over Laredo”) and a, uh, truckload of awards (including a Grammy). We still think a triumphant return to Indio to headline Stagecoach is in the cards, and 2026 would be as good a time as any for it.

There’s only one current (female) country star whose star has risen as fast as Wilson’s, and it’s Megan Moroney. The Georgia native had already broken through in a big way when she played Stagecoach in 2024. But with the success of her hit “Am I Ok?” and its namesake album and tour plus a rabid young fan base, Moroney seems worthy of higher billing now, and perhaps even a headlining slot. But we’d be remiss if we didn’t mention another blonde with a million-dollar voice we’d love to see listed: Kelsea Ballerini, who has released many of her biggest hits, including “Half of My Hometown” and the recent “Baggage” in the years since her 2018 Stagecoach set.

George Strait

If there’s one thing we know about Stagecoach, it’s that the organizers love a good legacy act. And few artists — living or otherwise — have left a bigger legacy than the aptly nicknamed King of Country Music. Amazingly, Strait headlined the inaugural Stagecoach festival in 2007, but has never been back. But there would seem to be no time like the present for the return the 73-year-old, who has been on quite a run recently that has included both a run of stadium shows with Chris Stapleton and playing the biggest ticketed concert in the history of America (as in ever) just last year. Alas, if booking King George turns out to be a little too ambitious, we’ll also be watching to see if Goldenvoice instead turns to turn to Rascal Flatts, who are in the midst of a big reunion tour.

Cody Johnson

This throwback country star from Texas was fresh off the release of what remains the biggest song of his career, “’Til You Can’t,” when we last saw him at Stagecoach in 2022. But the hits have just kept on coming for “CoJo” with the subsequent release of his album “Leather” and favorites like “The Painter,” “The Fall” and “I’m Gonna Love You” that make him due for a return to the Mane Stage — and probably a later timeslot.

Ella Langley and Riley Green

Is it a cop-out to list these two fast-rising Alabama natives together? Maybe, but they’ve been inextricably linked in our ears ever since they took the country charts by storm with their cutesy collab “You Look Like You Love Me” last year. And while their romance has apparently fizzled, their respective paths to stardom sure haven’t as they’ve both released the biggest solo hits of their career in 2025, “Weren’t for the Wind” (Langley) and “Worst Way” (Green). So it seems like a good bet that one — if not both — will follow their glory road to the polo club, even if no one should be expecting them to perform together at this point. Another young hitmaker to look for on the lineup? Stagecoach 2024 performer Zach Top, who has enjoyed quite a year of his own with his old-school style hit “I Never Lie.”

Pitbull and Avril Lavigne

For a few years now, Goldenvoice has embraced booking overtly non-country acts to cap off each night of Stagecoach with a set of shows it bills as “Late Night in Palomino.” While those performers have spanned a surprisingly large gamut stretching all the way from autotune king T-Pain to the often-derided rock icons that are Nickleback (needless to say, this range makes predicting who will perform rather difficult), something of a theme has managed to emerge: Typically, the Late Night in Palomino acts are big-name rock, pop and hip hop artists who were at their peak 15 to 20 years ago and whose music now reads as outdated in a way that might make their presence feel a little silly — almost as if they were booked ironically — at least up until they get the crowd jubilantly hyped as it laps up the nostalgia. Both Lavigne and Pitbull have been touring recently and seem to fit the bill, and who wouldn’t want to see a bunch of country kids get down to “Sk8r Boi” and “International Love” on back-to-back nights?

More up-and-coming artists who could be on the Stagecoach 2026 lineup

Paul Albani-Burgio covers growth, development and business in the Coachella Valley. Email him at [email protected].

This article originally appeared on Palm Springs Desert Sun: Stagecoach 2026 lineup predictions: Lainey Wilson, Ella Langley, more