Everything You Need to Know to Go to Coachella 2025
Lineup info, where to stay, what to eat, and most importantly what to wear at Southern California's signature music festival
There are plenty of reasons to visit Southern California’s desert cities in spring, whether you’re looking for midcentury architecture tours, tiki drinks, massive art installations, hiking, tennis, or an escape from the inevitable late-season week of wintry mix on the East Coast. But if you’re headed to the Coachella Valley in the second half of April, you’re probably going for one big thing—to dance, party, eat, and dress up in outlandish and culturally insensitive clothing at Coachella music festival 2025.
Southern California’s biggest and best musical festival is once again set for mid-April in Indio, spread across two weekends packed with great bands, massive art installations, epic dinners, and influencer pool parties that look cool on TikTok but are very sad in real life.
We’ve got the guide for you to get the most out of your visit to the Empire Polo Club, whether you’re looking forward to headliners Lady Gaga, Green Day, Post Malone, and Travis Scott; second-line acts like Missy Elliott, Charli xcx, and Megan Thee Stallion; or lower-profile artists like Kneecap, Ravyn Lenae, and The Dare. For tips about where to stay, how to get there, what to eat, and more, check out this guide to everything you need to know for Coachella 2025.
Where and when is Coachella this year?
Coachella is spread across two weekends once again, from Friday, April 11, through Sunday, April 13, and then again from Friday, April 18, through Sunday, April 20. It’s located on the sprawling lawns of the Empire Polo Club in Indio, which is about two and a half hours from LA and three hours from San Diego, depending on traffic—it can also take four hours or more to get there from LA if you leave midday on Friday.
How's the Coachella lineup?
It's pretty great, as always. The headliners are Lady Gaga, Green Day, Post Malone, and Travis Scott, but there are awesome artists all up and down the lineup and spread across all three days of each weekend.
Friday features hot musicians like FKA Twigs, Benson Boone, and GloRilla, and fun throwbacks like Three 6 Mafia and Seun Kuti & Egypt 80.
Saturday is an eclectic group, with artists like The Misfits and Clairo sharing the day with T-Pain, Japanese Breakfast, Jimmy Eat World, and Yo Gabba Gabba (yes, that Yo Gabba Gabba from your childhood).
Sunday is similarly a grab bag of musicians that run the stylistic gamut, including Zedd, beabadoobee, Shaboozey, and Arca.
How to get tickets to Coachella
There are no day passes for Coachella anymore, only passes for each, full, three-day weekend. General admission tickets for weekend one are sold out, but there are passes for weekend two still available through the official website, as well as VIP passes for both. You can still join the waitlist for weekend one, and tickets are also available on various secondary market websites. Your wristband, which you are obligated to leave on for your entire visit, is your ticket.
While you’re getting your passes, it may also be worth purchasing an official shuttle or parking pass from the same site, depending on how you’re getting there. And speaking of which…
How to get to Coachella
How do you get to Coachella? Practice, practice, practice. It’s a silly old joke, but there’s a bit of truth to it if you read it another way—there’s nothing easy about getting to Coachella, on stage or as an attendee. Traffic around the venue is bad and shuttle passes are expensive. Rideshare apps aren’t much better: They’re way overcrowded, cell service is spotty, and the pickup and dropoff points are a full-on hike from the festival grounds, which feels especially bad after a long day dancing and partying in the dust and heat.
You’re going to have to bite one bullet or another. For our money, the shuttles are probably the best and most reliable option. There are also shuttles directly from LAX to Coachella, which is a cool option if you’re flying in and staying at the campground or one of the local resorts.
Where to stay at Coachella
The desert can get insanely hot, and the location is a little inconvenient, and the golf courses clash wildly with the desert landscape, but there is one thing that makes the Coachella Valley perfect for massive music festivals: There are so, so many places to stay. The whole valley is full of large resorts and timeshare-based condo communities, with tons of hotels and app-based home rentals available too. Everything is marked up in price for Coachella, but there is no shortage of options.
The alternative is to camp at the festival grounds, either in your car or in a tent by buying a camping pass. This is the most essential way to experience the festival. If you want to come back from a wild weekend with dust in unexpected places and a slew of new stories, it’s probably the way to go.
What to eat at Coachella
In recent years food has become a huge part of the Coachella experience, and the organizers always bring a great lineup of SoCal restaurants to the festival grounds. This year, featured restaurants include Angelenos’ Wood Fired Pizza, Birrieria Michi, Bang Bang Noodles, and Palm Springs icon Cheeky’s. The festival also tends to bring in restaurants from around the country as special guests. If you’d like to plan your meals ahead of time, Coachella has published its full restaurant list.
The Coachella organizers usually build in a slew of food-based experiences too, like speakeasy-style hidden bars, omakase meals, and miniature tasting menus so you can take a little time off your feet and refresh while you eat. And if you can squeeze it into the budget, the Outstanding In The Field dinner series is always a highlight—a rustic-chic four-course family-style dinner extravaganza with wine pairings for some 200 people set at one extremely long table that winds its way through the Coachella Rose Garden. It’s quite the thing.
What to wear to Coachella
Fashion runs so wild at Coachella and there are so many people going so hard that you will never really look out of place. The classic Coachella summer boho thing is still going strong, as are throwback NBA jerseys in a size that’s either a little too small or way too big. The success of Beyonce’s Cowboy Carter and her upcoming tour suggests that Western wear is likely to be hot—both on trend and temperature-wise—this year.
If you’re not looking at the festival grounds as your own personal catwalk, then we have two essential pieces of advice for you: Check the weather, and wear comfortable shoes.
What else is there to do at Coachella?
Coachella is about a lot more than the music, camping, food, fashion, and general debauchery. Or, maybe it’s not about a lot more than all of that, but there are some other things to do. The iconic ferris wheel will be there, of course, and along with a series of art spaces and activities, including a 32-foot tower of inflatable flowers, the iconic balloon chain, an energy playground, and more.
There are also several interesting spaces designed to make the festival more fun, inclusive, and accessible. There will be a social gathering space specifically designed to empower the LGBTQIA+ and BIPOC community, a hub in the center of the festival that they’re calling Queer+. There’s a similar space committed to amplifying the voices of BIPOC people with disabilities called Accessible+ that will have special programming, access, and networking opportunities.
Should you go to Coachella this year?
If you’ve made it this far but haven’t actually made up your mind, then yeah, it seems like you should just go. It’s a truly unique festival on an epic scale, and the highs and the lows (it’s a wild time in the desert, so yes, there will probably be some lows) are worth experiencing at least once.
Ben Mesirow is an associate editor at Thrillist, and an Echo Park native who writes TV, fiction, food, and sports. At one time or another, his writing has appeared in The LA Times, Litro, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, Los Angeles Magazine, and scratched into dozens of desks at Walter Reed Middle School.