Hardly Strictly Announces Initial 2026 Lineup, Including My Morning Jacket

The first artists for this year’s Hardly Strictly Bluegrass festival have been announced. The annual festival has brought admission-free live music to Golden Gate Park every October for the past 25 years, offering a mix of genres that seems to expand beyond bluegrass a little more every year.

The bill’s biggest outliers so far are retro melodic rockers My Morning Jacket and Tyler Ballgame, as well as Yemeni-Israeli experimentalists El Khat. (My Morning Jacket vocalist Jim James last appeared at the festival 10 years ago, when he performed a solo set.) HSB attendees will also be treated to the soothing sounds of Gillian Welch & David Rawlings, the Americana folk of Hiss Golden Messenger, Kathleen Edwards’ emotive alt-country, the intricate instrumentalism of William Tyler & Yasmin Williams, and John Craigie and the Coffis Brothers’ groove-infused country. For the bluegrass purists, there’ll be Old Crow Medicine Show, as well as AJ Lee & Blue Summit.

Hardly Strictly mainstay Steve Earle, who has performed at the festival every year since 2002, will kick off the weekend with a special show at the Masonic on Oct. 1. “An Evening Honoring Steve Earle” will see the country music legend joined onstage by friends and collaborators including Emmylou Harris, Jackson Browne, Gillian Welch & David Rawlings, and more. The concert will benefit the Sonoma nonprofit Sweetwater Spectrum, which provides residential housing for adults with autism and other developmental disabilities.

Hardly Strictly Bluegrass will be held in Golden Gate Park, Oct. 2–4, at Hellman Hollow and Lindley and Marx Meadows. Festival organizers will continue to announce more artists in the coming weeks.