Radiohead’s bunker at Coachella

Coachella opened on Friday, April 10, with a surprise most festivals don’t have: a 17,000-square-foot bunker hidden under the Empire Polo Club, built to house a new Radiohead installation called “Motion Picture House: Kid A Mnesia.” The piece sits below the same grounds where the main festival crowds move above it. (musically.com) This is not a side tent with some screens in it. Reports describe a 75-minute large-format film and art environment inside a space with 38-foot ceilings, designed specifically for this one work. (desertsun.com) The material comes from Radiohead’s Kid A and Amnesiac era, which means the installation reaches back to albums released in 2000 and 2001. The images were created by Thom Yorke and longtime Radiohead artist Stanley Donwood during that period, then rebuilt into a physical walk-through experience for 2026. (musically.com) That history matters because “Kid A Mnesia” did not start as a room under a polo field. It first appeared in 2021 as a virtual exhibition made with Epic Games for consoles and computers, and Coachella is where it has now been turned into an in-person structure people can physically enter. (musically.com) Radiohead is not on the Coachella lineup as a performing act this year. Instead, the band is showing up as part of the festival’s art program, which shifts the experience from “go see a set” to “go find a hidden building and spend 75 minutes inside it.” (timeout.com) (nbclosangeles.com) Coachella has always mixed music with large outdoor sculpture, but the 2026 coverage points to something bigger: the site is being framed as an “enormous art wonderland,” not just a concert field with decorations around the edges. The bunker fits that shift because it is architecture, cinema, and exhibition space all at once. (nbclosangeles.com) The name “Motion Picture House” is also literal in a way festival branding usually isn’t. One report says the installation uses a custom six-point surround sound system, and Thom Yorke described its story as a monster trapped in a derelict museum of lost things. (consequence.net) Coachella’s two 2026 weekends run April 10 to 12 and April 17 to 19, and all festival ticketholders can access the installation during the event. So the audience is not just Radiohead fans who bought a separate museum ticket; it is the full festival crowd moving between stages and this underground film space. (coachella.com) (consequence.net) The bunker is also not a one-weekend stunt. After Coachella, the installation is scheduled to travel to a short list of North American cities, including Brooklyn, Chicago, Mexico City, and San Francisco, turning a festival exclusive into a touring exhibition. (rollingstone.com) (hypebeast.com) What Coachella built, then, is not just another venue. It is a secret room under one of America’s biggest festivals, opened first for a band that turned two early-2000s albums into a 2021 digital maze and now into a 2026 underground art walk. (musically.com) (consequence.net)