Balloon Chain and drone moments

Coachella’s first weekend closed Sunday, April 12, with festivalgoers moving between giant art works, stage sets and a drone-lit sky over Indio. (pressenterprise.com) The Inland Empire News Group’s Day 3 photo report showed people walking past the “Balloon Chain” installation as a drone display flew during Young Thug’s Sunday set, and it also photographed FKA twigs performing on the Mojave stage. (pressenterprise.com) Coachella’s 2026 festival ran April 10-12 for Weekend 1 and is scheduled to return April 17-19 for Weekend 2 at the Empire Polo Club in Indio, California. Young Thug and FKA twigs were both listed on the 2026 lineup for Sunday. (coachella.com, coachellavalley.com) The art is part of the event, not side decoration. Coachella says it commissions large-scale installations across the grounds so fans encounter them as landmarks, public space and gathering points between sets. (coachella.com) This year’s art program was curated by Public Art Company founder Raffi Lehrer with Goldenvoice art director Paul Clemente, and Archinect reported that the 2026 brief emphasized “luminance, transparency, and lightness of form.” (archinect.com, coachella.com) Coachella’s official art page says the 2026 program mixes new and returning works across the Empire Polo Field, with pieces designed to be seen from the ground and from a distance. One of the new works, “Starry Eyes,” rises nearly 40 feet and is built to provide shade by day and glow after dark. (coachella.com, archinect.com) Sunday’s music programming stretched across genres and stages. Billboard Canada described Day 3 as the festival’s most stylistically mixed day, with hip-hop, alternative pop, electronic dance music, jazz, reggaetón and Korean pop moving in parallel late into the night. (ca.billboard.com) That mix helps explain why a single photo frame could hold an installation, a drone show and a rap set, while another captured FKA twigs in the Mojave tent. Coachella’s official schedule and livestream pages also frame the festival as a multi-stage, all-day experience rather than a single headliner event. (coachella.com, coachella.com) Weekend 1 is over, but the same festival grounds reopen in four days. By Friday, April 17, the desert will fill again with the same formula Sunday’s photos caught in one glance: art on the field, performance onstage and spectacle overhead. (coachella.com, archinect.com)