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The 6 best music festivals still ahead in 2026, ranked

From a woodland weekend in Wales to Burning Man's temporary desert city and a coastal techno festival in Morocco, music festivals still ahead in 2026

Credit: Exit Festival

Festival season 2025 delivered plenty of memories, and 2026 brought its own wave of announcements, headliners, and brand-new events. Notably, one of the world’s biggest and best music festivals sat out the year entirely, since Glastonbury took a fallow year after an electric 2025 to give the land some rest.

Most of the year’s major festivals have already come and gone by mid-August, but a handful of genuinely significant events remain on the calendar, spanning everything from a woodland weekender in Wales to a desert art gathering in Nevada.

The six festivals below appear on Time Out and cover the best music festivals still ahead in 2026. They span three continents, from a woodland weekender in Wales to a desert art gathering in Nevada and a coastal techno festival in Morocco, giving travelers a genuine range of options for the remainder of the year. Timing varies considerably across the list, since some events, such as Green Man and Forwards Festival, wrap up within the next couple of weeks, while others, including MOGA and the later legs of Exit Festival’s global tour, stretch well into autumn. A few entries reflect genuine shifts within the festival world too, since Exit Festival’s move away from its longtime Serbian home marks one of the more significant changes to hit a major European festival in years, driven by funding cuts that have forced organizers to rethink the entire model. Musical range also runs wide throughout this list, from Green Man’s folk-leaning lineup to Mutek’s experimental electronic programming and Burning Man’s genuinely unconventional approach to music as just one part of a much larger art experience built around an entire temporary desert community that forms and completely dissolves again within a single week each year.

1. Green Man toasts 50 years with real ale and folk-pop

Credit: Green Man Festival

With more than 50 years of experience behind it, Green Man has earned a reputation as one of the UK’s most beloved festivals, running August 20 to 23 in the Brecon Beacons, Wales. The event delivers incredible fresh food from every corner of the globe, alongside 99 ales and ciders in its own dedicated beer festival and eight bars serving a wide range of cocktails.

Musically, the lineup tends to skew toward the more thoughtful end of the spectrum, with previous headliners including Sampha, First Aid Kit and Michael Kiwanuka setting the tone for the kind of acts that typically appear. The 2026 lineup remained unconfirmed as of this writing, though the festival’s track record suggests another strong bill of alternative and folk-leaning artists.

Green Man distinguishes itself through decades of consistency instead of chasing the latest trends, since a festival running more than half a century has built a genuinely loyal following that returns year after year for the same pairing of good food, good drink and thoughtfully curated music.

Festivalgoers hoping to sample the full range of the beer festival should pace themselves across all four days instead of trying everything on the first night, since 99 different ales and ciders make for a genuinely overwhelming lineup on their own. The Brecon Beacons setting itself adds considerable value beyond the music and drink, since the surrounding mountains and rivers offer genuine hiking and swimming opportunities for anyone hoping to build a few quiet daytime hours into an otherwise packed festival schedule. Bringing swimwear for a river dip during a quiet afternoon can turn........

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