For most of the Outside Lands weekend, San Francisco bathed in an uncharacteristic amount of sunlight. Golden Gate Park, hosting three days of music, arts, bites and sips, was the only place shrouded in romantic haze from Friday afternoon to Sunday evening –– as if even Karl the Fog had set up an out-of-office reply and wandered into Lindley Meadow on a Bison Pass. Visitors and performers alike delighted in his presence: “Oh, thanks for turning on the drizzle, it feels like home,” Hozier joked on Sunday. Indeed, Golden Gate Park feels purpose-built for a summer festival: neither too hot nor too cold, endlessly green and softly blurred by a mist lingering mid-air, it feels like a corner at the edge of space and time –– a little weekend-land.
Hozier performing at Outside Lands 2025. Photo courtesy of Arina Zadvornaya.
Hozier performing at Outside Lands 2025. Photo courtesy of Arina Zadvornaya
The weekend’s lineup was impressive, with three stages and both local and international talent on board. Even the indie-leaning names read less like lucky novices and more like artists on the verge of breaking out. Curation, however, appeared to be based on quality and cohesion rather than a momentary Tik Tok blast. While sharing artists with some early summer festivals on the East Coast, Outside Lands works smarter, pulling pages from both Boston Calling and Governors Ball’s books — and polishing up the results into a lineup woven as tightly as a Haight-Ashbury flower crown. Finding itself closer to the end of the summer festival circuit, Outside Lands inevitably becomes a kind of “in-previous-episodes” recap for the excitement of the past three months — and does it with flying colors.
Each day’s headliners delivered sets that felt like full narrative arcs, in some cases stretching beyond the park limits: Doja Cat, for example, held a surprise performance in San Francisco’s legendary queer nightclub OASIS. Other performers, while sticking to the festival stages, still seemed properly enamored with the Outside Lands crowd. Jack Antonoff signed a potato (yes, a potato) and practically begged the festival-goers to crowd-surf. Hozier took a gentler approach and shared a heartfelt speech before inviting the crowd to join in on the “family photo” of him and his band being taken on stage –– and Glass Animals, excited about their return to Golden Gate Park after debuting on a smaller stage in 2021, declared Outside Lands one of their favorite festivals on the planet. Yes, everyone always says this –– but in this case, it might just have been true.
Bleachers performing at Outside Lands 2025. Photo courtesy of Arina Zadvornaya
Bleachers performing at Outside Lands 2025. Photo courtesy of Arina Zadvornaya
Despite the spectacularly diverse lineup, not everyone will find a set to attend during a midday lull. For anyone ready to rave before dinner, Outside Lands booked DJ performances as a lively answer to the eternal problem of filling one’s downtime. And for those temporarily tired of both music and dancing … well, the festival’s own wedding venue was available all weekend.
But Outside Lands is so much more than just a well-planned sequence of performances — nor is it merely a summer postcard. In many ways, it becomes a small weekend universe. Outside Lands isn’t just a lineup: it has character, steeped in an unmistakable pride in being a Californian festival. This spirit is seen in everything, from selections of local beers and wines at special dedicated tasting locations, to over a hundred local food vendors, to every corner of the grounds being named after a San Francisco area. This spirit is even seen in the actions taken at Outside Lands. The festival goes bigger and greener each year, with all compostable utensils, recycling bins on every corner and teams of volunteers circling constantly with brooms and bins.
At this point, a skeptical reader might raise their eyebrow: so, was it that perfect? The answer, of course, is no –– nothing is. Lines get long, merch runs out and the city buses could always afford to run just a bit more consistently. And yet, it is impossible to ignore the fact that Outside Lands, for the colossus of an event it is, runs exceptionally smoothly. Where its East Coast siblings trip over capacity issues and last-minute cancellations, Outside Lands delivers a reliably enjoyable weekend experience start to finish, making it that much easier to romanticize the summer music season nearing its conclusion. A typical festival-goer slides from “why is it only three days?” to “thank god it’s only three days” between Friday and Sunday, and from “I can’t wait to see my first set” to “I can’t wait to sit down in the office” between May and August. San Francisco flips the script –– and, while bidding farewell, leaves the crowd properly primed for all the concerts that fall has to offer, even as the fog rolls back into the city.
Arina Zadvornaya is a graduate student in the College of Engineering. She can be reached at az499@cornell.edu.
