BINI makes Coachella history

BINI walked onto Coachella’s Mojave Stage at 4:15 p.m. in Indio on April 10 and became the first Filipino group to perform at the festival, turning a mid-afternoon set into one of opening day’s biggest milestones. The group is eight members deep — Aiah, Colet, Maloi, Gwen, Stacey, Mikha, Jhoanna, and Sheena — and Rolling Stone reported that the Mojave crowd was packed enough that Filipino flags were visible from the stage. BINI did not arrive as a brand-new act chasing a lucky break. The group was formed in 2019 through ABS-CBN’s Star Hunt Academy, a televised training program that spent years building them into a full-scale pop act before their 2021 debut. That long training arc matters at a festival like Coachella because the set was built like a sprint, not a showcase. Forbes and Billboard Philippines both described a 45-minute performance with live vocals, tight choreography, costume changes, and remixed versions of fan favorites. They opened with “Shagidi” in gold looks with salakot-inspired headpieces, a nod to traditional Filipino hat shapes, then switched outfits as the set moved into “Zero Pressure” and “Out of My Head.” The middle of the set is where BINI made the cultural pitch plain. They greeted the audience with “Mabuhay,” introduced themselves as coming “all the way from the Philippines,” and moved into Tagalog hits like “Karera” and “Salamin, Salamin” with the crowd singing back key lines. They also used the set to launch new music in real time. “Blush” got its first live performance one day after the extended play “Signals” was released, which meant Coachella doubled as both a history-making booking and a release-week stage. The closer was “Pantropiko,” one of the songs most tied to BINI’s breakout beyond the Philippines, and Forbes noted that its official performance video has passed 119 million YouTube views. A festival crowd in California was hearing a song that was already massive online before the group ever touched the desert stage. This was not a side-stage cameo hidden deep in the schedule. ABS-CBN called Mojave the festival’s second-largest tent, and Billboard Philippines noted that BINI’s slot sat between Slayyyter and Central Cee, putting them in a traffic-heavy part of Friday’s lineup. What Coachella gave BINI was a U.S. festival stage with global cameras on it. What BINI brought back was proof that Filipino pop could fill that space with its own language, its own styling, and its own crowd response instead of being translated into somebody else’s format.