Coachella’s lineup, livestream and must‑see sets

Coachella starts Friday, April 10, at the Empire Polo Club in Indio, and the at-home version is unusually close to the real thing: the official YouTube stream begins at 4 p.m. Pacific time and runs across both weekends, April 10 to 12 and April 17 to 19. (coachella.com) (youtube.com) This year’s lineup tilts hard toward mainstream pop, with Sabrina Carpenter, Justin Bieber and Karol G at the top and big reunion or comeback draws underneath them like The XX, The Strokes, Young Thug and BIGBANG. (coachellavalley.com) (timeout.com) The festival still runs like two separate cities built in the desert for two long weekends, with Friday through Sunday shows on April 10 to 12 and then the same format again on April 17 to 19. The site is the same Indio polo grounds that turn into a maze of stages, food stands and large-scale art every spring. (coachella.com) (nbclosangeles.com) The biggest change for people staying home is coverage: Coachella says seven stages will stream live on YouTube, so the couch version is no longer just a highlight reel from one main camera. The livestream page also says replays, reminders and a schedule synced to your time zone are built into the Coachella app. (coachella.com) Three of those streams get the premium treatment in 4K resolution: the Coachella Stage, Outdoor Theatre and Sahara. That is the difference between watching a concert through a window and seeing the lighting rigs, stage screens and crowd shots with full sharpness. (youtube.com) (blog.google) YouTube is also leaning into the “too many good sets at once” problem with multiview on television, which lets viewers keep up to four live stages on screen at the same time and switch audio between them. Coachella and YouTube are also bringing back “Watch With,” where creators add live commentary on their own channels. (coachella.com) (blog.google) If you want one set that feels built for the stream, Anyma is the obvious bet. Time Out reports his Friday-night ÆDEN show is scheduled for midnight, and his live setup is known for tightly synced visuals, lighting and music that play more like a science-fiction film than a standard disc jockey set. (timeout.com) That late slot matters because Coachella’s most elaborate electronic shows often land after the headliners, when the crowd is thinner and the production can get stranger. Anyma is also one of the few names on the poster who is billed high enough to sit near the top but different enough to break the festival’s pop-heavy mood. (coachellavalley.com) (timeout.com) If you are planning your weekend around headline names, the official schedule page and the livestream hub are the two tabs to keep open, because Coachella updates set times there and YouTube splits each stage into its own feed. That turns the festival into something closer to channel surfing, except every channel is live from the same patch of desert. (coachella.com 1) (coachella.com 2) The easiest summary of Coachella 2026 is that it is selling two versions of the same event at once: a sold-out trip to Indio for the people on the grass, and a free, seven-stage, 4K-heavy “Couchella” for everyone else. On Friday, April 10, both start at the same hour. (teenvogue.com) (youtube.com)