When Brandi Carlile announced the 2026 lineup for her Girls Just Wanna Weekend, featuring powerhouses like The Chicks (performing their fist full set since 2023) and Sam Smith alongside her own headline slot, she wasn’t just booking another music festival. She was doubling down on what has become one of music’s most politically charged — and joyfully subversive — gatherings: a space where pleasure and resistance are inseparable, where crowdsurfing through pool water at midnight is as important as discussing radical vulnerability in afternoon workshops.
The fest, which offers Carlile fans a chance to catch the star ahead of her anticipated “The Human Tour,” will celebrate its seventh year January 15th-19th, 2026 at Mexico’s Barceló Maya Resort. Over the years, Carlile’s all-female and non-binary festival has evolved from a pointed response to mainstream festivals that exclude women headliners into something far more urgent: a four-day temporary autonomous zone where the political is poolside and the personal is performed under the Caribbean stars.
Get Girls Just Wanna Weekend 2026 Tickets
The 2026 roster includes CMAT, Joy Oladokun, Jensen McRae, Lucius, Jasmine.4.t, August Ponthier, SistaStrings, Autumn Nicholas, Arroba Nat, The Carlile Family Band, The Marshgrass Mamas, and a special Titans of Americana set, plus comedian Kristin Key. Here’s why it’s special. (Editor’s Note: You can also enter to win a festival package for two to the upcoming event here.)
Photo by Alive Coverage for 100x Hospitality
The Brandi Bubble Meets Political Reality
Even in a normal year for Girls Just Wanna, attendees can’t wait to escape inside “the Brandi bubble.” That feels more true than ever this year, following the swearing-in of a new administration that has not exactly placed the protection of women’s rights or LGBTQ+ freedoms at the forefront of its agenda.
At previous festivals, Carlile hasn’t shied away from the tension, telling the crowd this was “not a check your feelings at the door kind of place,” and inviting attendees to “fill up and go home and do whatever you can do for your community to make sure that next year doesn’t feel like the one we just went through.” Politics and pleasure, anxiety and joy, all swirling together in the Mexican heat.
Brandioke: Where Fans Become the Show
One of the festival’s most beloved traditions is Brandioke — karaoke hosted by Brandi herself, where Carlile hands over the mic and her band, including the Hanseroth twins, to fans and fellow artists who’ve won the chance to perform her songs.
It’s democracy in action, the musical equivalent of Carlile’s broader message: everyone deserves the spotlight. During the pool parties and afternoon sessions, Brandioke becomes less performance and more communion, with the Grammy-winning artist treating fan renditions of her catalog with the same reverence she’d give a collaboration with a musical legend. Past Brandioke sessions have featured surprise appearances — like when Holly and Jess from Lucius sang “The Story.”
Hot Tub Time Machine: Where Inhibitions Go to Die
If Brandioke is the festival’s heart, then Hot Tub Time Machine is its gloriously unhinged soul. The official festival site tauts a place where you can “dance the final night of Girls Just Wanna Weekend away at the Hot Tub Time Machine at the Beach pool, where late night performances, food options, and mas cervezas keep the fiesta going long after the sun sets.”
But that description barely captures the chaos. “I know, it’s so bad,” Carlile told reporters of the closing bacchanalia where she could be spotted pouring tequila into her own mouth as well as those of fans. But “bad” here means “so good it feels slightly illegal” — the kind of queer euphoria that happens when a few thousand women and non-binary folks decide that 3 a.m. in a Mexican resort pool is exactly where they need to be.
Past festivals have delivered moments that seem logistically impossible until you remember that anything can happen when everyone’s committed to the bit. As the Hot Tub Party stretches into the early morning hours, Brandi, the Twins and other artists shimmy and dance their way through exuberant, screaming throngs, sharing tequila shots before being crowd-surfed around the pool.
The crowdsurfing isn’t just a party trick — it’s a metaphor for the entire festival experience. In a world that often fails to support women artists, queer people, and anyone outside the mainstream, Girls Just Wanna Weekend creates a space where you can take the leap and trust you’ll be caught. The crowd becomes the stage, the audience becomes the artists, and everybody gets to experience what it feels like to be held.
Photo by Alive Coverage for 100x Hospitality
Titans of Americana: Instant Supergroup Magic
Among the weekend’s special events, the Titans of Americana songwriter rounds have become legendary. Past years have featured powerhouse combinations like Mary Chapin Carpenter, Brandy Clark, and Kim Richey — three songwriters who’ve shaped country and Americana music for decades coming together for intimate performances you couldn’t recreate anywhere else. The 2026 festival promises another Titans of Americana set with special guests Clark (reprising her role), Shawn Colvin, and Tish Melton.
These one-weekend-only supergroups showcase the collaborative spirit that defines the festival. Artists trade verses, finish each other’s songs, and demonstrate the deep bench of female talent that mainstream festivals routinely overlook when they book predominantly male lineups.
It’s a masterclass and a middle finger all at once — look at what you’re missing when you exclude half the population from your stages.
The Political Is Personal, The Personal Is Poolside
During the days, while some attendees nurse tequila hangovers, others attend seminars that make the festival’s political mission explicit, like Brandy Clark teaching a songwriting class in which she and a volunteer wrote a new song about reaching across the sociopolitical divide, or Jensen McRae co-leading a discussion with therapist Lindsay Wheeler on journaling with “radical vulnerability.”
The festival also features morning yoga sessions, craft beer tastings, a lip sync contest, beach volleyball, and optional off-site excursions to explore the Riviera Maya’s natural treasures: cenotes, ancient ruins, and local culture.
These daytime activities aren’t separate from the nighttime revelry — they’re part of the same fabric. Carlile has built a festival where dancing until 3 a.m. and engaging with difficult social issues go hand in hand.
The festival Carlile started to prove women could headline has become something bigger — a movable feast of feminist and queer joy that refuses to separate the political from the pleasurable. It’s a four-day reminder that our existence itself is an act of defiance, and if we’re going to defy, we might as well do it dancing, crowdsurfing, and singing Brandi Carlile covers at the top of our lungs.
As attendees board flights home each year, they carry with them Carlile’s instruction: to fill up and go home and do whatever they can for their communities. The Brandi bubble doesn’t burst, it expands, traveling home with everyone who experienced it, ready to transform the resistance into something truly irresistible.
