The Reinvention of Coachella

Since the beginning of the year, 2026 has been dubbed “the new 2016” across various social media platforms. Young people online seem to be yearning for a resurgence of how life was ten years ago. The rose-tinted social media filter has been revived and 2016 pop music is having its moment, with Zara Larsson’s hit “Lush Life” reentering the Billboard’s Top 100 for the first time in years.

Social media users have also taken to likening this year’s Coachella music festival with the year 2016. The 2026 festival’s lineup featured many acts who dominated the charts a decade ago, including Swae Lee, Disclosure, Young Thug and Major Lazer, with Justin Bieber headlining. This year’s Coachella also echoed 2016 aesthetics, with the “boho-chic” style that was the dominant festival wear ten years ago making a comeback. 2026 Coachella attendees donned flower crowns, crocheted tops and fringe boots – typically items that have been considered “out of trend” for the last few years. 

But while Coachella 2026 may have looked like Coachella 2016, it was fundamentally very different. 

The first Coachella festival was held in 1999 across the span of two days. It was founded by concert promoters Paul Tollett and Rick Van Santen and organized by Tollett's company Goldenvoice. At its core it was a response to overcrowded and overpriced festivals. It was initially described as the “anti-Woodstock,” with tickets costing only $50 per day for headliners Beck and Rage Against the Machine. From the beginning, the goal of Coachella was to celebrate musical diversity, bringing dozens of different genres together in one space and platforming many up and coming artists. In 1999, Coachella was alternative, affordable and seemingly anti-establishment. 

The first Coachella was monetarily unsuccessful, credited to the lack of corporate sponsors. Tollett revealed much later that the festival’s first year was an economic loss for Goldenvoice, costing them $750,000.

Coachella returned in 2001, this time headlined by Iggy Pop, another alternative artist, with tickets now costing $65. The festival continued to avoid corporate sponsorships and once again lost money. This time, however, it was only in the low six figures, as the second attempt had drawn slightly more fans than it did in 1999.

It was in 2001 that Goldenvoice partnered with Concerts West, an event promoter. And it was the third year of Coachella, which took place in 2002, where the festival finally broke even. Tickets remained at $65 per day, this time with more “mainstream” acts Oasis and Björk headlining. Tollett credits the partnership with Concerts West with “saving Coachella”.

Since 2002, Coachella has grown bigger than the creators ever imagined. The festival has expanded to three days instead of two and in 2010 eliminated its single-day tickets – it is now only possible to purchase passes for the whole weekend. In 2012 the festival added a second weekend. And in 2017, the festival had to get city approval to increase its capacity to 125,000 to accommodate for high demand.

Naturally, this expansion has coincided with a surge in prices. This year, general admission passes for the first weekend reached an all time high, originally retailing for $649, with VIP tickets costing double. But this is just the price to get into the festival. Additional costs can include on-site camping or nearby rental and hotel accommodation, as well as a shuttle pass to and from the festival grounds and food and drinks throughout the day. On-site camping passes can range from $150-400, while the average Indio Airbnb charged $1200 a night during Weekend 2 this year.

Brands have also become a major part of the Coachella experience. Although Coachella initially refused sponsorships, they now have dozens of corporate partners. Beginning in 2011, festival executives began to incorporate brands more and more into the event, by creating and supporting pop-ups and sponsored parties. Corporations and their brands have now become an integral part of the festival. 

Social media now also has a dominant presence at Coachella. Brands pay to bring large numbers of social media content creators to Coachella, in exchange for these “influencers” posting branded content for them. Throughout the weekend, social media is flooded with tens of thousands of branded posts about outfits and makeup for the festival. It may seem as if the content creators are benefitting the most from this relationship, since they often receive thousands of dollars in compensation for their branded content. But the real money-makers are the brands themselves.

As the festival grows bigger each year, the engagement rates on Coachella-related content only increase. Given the high media traffic, one post from an influencer at the festival can draw more attention for a brand than a dedicated marketing campaign.

This emphasis on brands and content creation has effectively turned Coachella from an event meant to provide an affordable option for appreciating musical diversity to one centered around money-making through spectacle and social media. The festival has become a business itself, attempting to generate as much profit as it can each year.

So while the internet may have branded this Coachella as “so 2016”, it is quite clear that it is rooted in surface level nostalgia. The 2026 festival may have featured popular 2010s music acts and fashion inspired from that era, but Coachella has fundamentally changed at its core.

The emphasis on highly curated influencer fashion and branded social media posts clearly separate it from the organic festival style and culture of the past. Exclusivity is at an all time high as ticket prices have skyrocketed and brands have seemingly taken over the festival. Now Coachella appears to be much more about documenting the experience online to produce as much money as possible than about appreciating music.

Coachella’s previous identity of being an affordable and accessible music event is long gone. It now serves as a symbol of corporate consumer culture. In 2026, Coachella mirrors the same commercialized and branded experiences its creation was meant to oppose. 

Photo Source: Jason Persse, Wikimedia Commons