One of San Francisco’s biggest music festivals, Outside Lands, is coming back to Golden Gate Park this summer, with Charli xcx, The Strokes and Rüfüs Du Sol headlining.
The rest of the 2026 lineup promises standout acts as well, including Labrinth, Pink Panthress, Ethel Cain, Death Cab for Cutie and Baby Keem.
And this three-day festival on Friday, Aug. 7, Saturday, Aug. 8 and Sunday, Aug. 9 will be especially packed this year.
That’s because several Outside Lands ticket packages — like General Admission, General Admission + and VIP — are already sold out.
But if you were hoping to attend, all hope is not lost yet.
Read on for your remaining options for scoring tickets to Outside Lands’ very popular show this year (as well as tips on how to avoid scams).
The big thing to know: Outside Lands tickets are not physical tickets or QR codes on your phone — they’re physical wristbands that you register online and that grant you entry to the festival.
The official ticket partner of Outside Lands is Front Gate Tickets.
Almost all the different types of Outside Lands tickets, like General Admission and VIP, are sold out.
The last individual ticket price left is a Friday single-day ticket through the pricey Golden Gate Club, which includes perks like up-close viewing and curated food and drink.
However, this ticket costs $2,369.
There are also exclusive group viewing offers, like the SOMA Social Club, suites and boxes — but these are packages arranged directly with Outside Lands.
Yes, there is a waitlist for all of the ticket offers that are sold out. You can sign up for the waitlist with Front Gate Tickets, where you will be asked to provide a payment method and shipping address.
When you’re on the waitlist, any tickets that become available are offered on a first-come, first-served basis.
Unfortunately, there is no set timeline in which you’ll hear back about getting a ticket. But if you do get called up on the waitlist, you’ll receive a “waitlist confirmation”, which Front Gate Tickets asks you to review ASAP “to ensure that your information is still correct.”
Unless you tell Front Gate Tickets you don’t, in fact, want the available tickets by opting out of your request by the date listed in your email confirmation, “you will then be charged the full amount requested” to the payment method you’ve provided, the company said.
If your purchase is successful, you’ll then receive a receipt for your order, and your wristbands will either be delivered to the address you’ve provided or made available for in-person pick-up if it’s too close to the festival start date (see below).
You may want to sign up for multiple spots on a waitlist — and you can.
But remember, if you get off the waitlist for multiple ticket offers, you will be charged for all of those tickets.
Verified resale tickets are sold through Ticketmaster’s Ticket Exchange. Be sure to look before you buy, because some tickets are being sold in pairs of two or three.
Costs vary a lot —for example, a Friday single-day GA ticket ranges from $264.74 to $927.77.
Also, be patient. In this reporter’s experience, the ticketexchangebyticketmaster.com website is very buggy, and you may get hit with a couple of 404 screens.
If you get off the waitlist or buy your resale before July 28, your wristband may be shipped out to you. (And if you bought through resale, the original wristband deactivates and cannot be used for the festival — so no need to worry about the buyer changing their mind and taking your spot again.)
After July 28, you will likely have to pick the wristband up at Will Call in Golden Gate Park. The box office is at Marx Meadow, located at 25th & Fulton, and is open:
Festival organizers say if you didn’t receive a tracking number for your wristband by the week of Outside Lands, you should submit a request with Front Gate Tickets as soon as possible.
According to a spokesperson with Outside Lands in an email to KQED, “We only recommend purchasing directly from Ticketmaster resale as this is the only verified method of reselling one’s festival passes.”
If you buy Outside Lands tickets through outside third-party sellers like StubHub or social media threads, you won’t be able to seek official support if something goes wrong.
“Unfortunately, for account security, we cannot release order information for orders you did not purchase directly via Front Gate Tickets, nor can we verify the validity of third-party tickets,” the website’s FAQ reads.
If you do go the social media route, like the genuinely friendly Outside Lands Reddit, make very sure the wristband you’re offered is unregistered.
According to veteran users, it is “one of the easiest ways to be scammed” since “the registered user can claim that the wristband was lost at any time and get a new one.”
A few Outside Lands ticket scams to watch for:
From the World Cup to the Super Bowl to the Eras Tour, KQED reporters also have a lot of experience in writing guides about avoiding ticket scams.
In fact, during the Taylor Swift tour, the Better Business Bureau issued a warning about resale scams, with many people discovering after sending the money through apps like Venmo or Zelle that these “tickets” never existed.
Be sure to check out the person’s profile and their past posting history to see if it seems real.
And if you do choose to buy a resale, use your credit card, according to the BBB. This at least provides some protection for you if the deal was fake.
If you are buying a resale ticket from a friend, make sure you call your friend directly to make sure someone isn’t impersonating them online.
Also be sure to scrutinize the price — if the cost seems too good to be true, it just might be.
Make sure to document all your communication with the person who promised to sell you a ticket — and take screenshots of those messages in case they attempt to delete anything from their end.
If you were scammed online or over the phone:
You can then report the situation to your local police department, as the city where you live is where the crime took place.
If you bought the fake ticket in person from a scalper:
Contact the police department of the city where the transaction took place.
You can also file a complaint with the California Attorney General’s office or the Better Business Bureau.
KQED’s Carlos Cabrera-Lomelí contributed to this report.