The Festival d’été de Québec has unveiled the lineup for its 2026 edition, scheduled for July 9 to 19 across Old Québec. Over eleven days, the event will present more than 175 performances, once again combining major international headliners with a wide cross-section of Canadian and Québec artists.
Among the most prominent names on the bill is Gwen Stefani, whose career spans three decades, from her early success with No Doubt to a string of global solo hits in the 2000s. British rock band Muse will also return to the festival, nearly a decade after closing the event in 2017 with one of its most widely attended performances. Electronic music will be represented at the top of the lineup by Dutch DJ Martin Garrix, a regular fixture on the world’s largest festival stages.
The program also draws on acts from the late ’90s and early 2000s wave of alternative rock and rap. Limp Bizkit, whose blend of rap and metal defined an era of mainstream rock radio, appears among the headliners, alongside hip-hop pioneers Cypress Hill. Pop singer Kesha also joins the lineup, bringing a catalogue of dance-driven hits that helped define the early 2010s.
Several other acts reflect the festival’s interest in artists with broad crossover appeal. Folk-rock group The Lumineers, known for arena-sized sing-alongs built around acoustic songwriting, will be part of the program. Canadian vocalist Michael Bublé is also scheduled to perform, offering a set rooted in pop standards and jazz traditions. Meanwhile, American artist Jelly Roll, whose mix of country, rock and hip-hop has propelled him to major chart success in recent years, will close the run of shows on the Plains.
Québec artists continue to play a central role throughout the festival. The local rap scene will be highlighted with a program led by Souldia, joined by fellow rappers Koriass and FouKi. Elsewhere in the lineup, several prominent voices from the province’s songwriting and indie scenes will appear, including Patrick Watson, Klô Pelgag, Lou-Adriane Cassidy, Les Louanges and Ariane Roy.
The festival also includes a number of international artists connected to more specialized musical scenes. In electronic music, Brazilian producer ALOK will present a large-scale performance concept, while Canadian DJ WHIPPED CREAM and British producer D.O.D. also appear in the lineup. Reggae and Afro-Caribbean sounds will be represented by artists such as Sean Paul, Danakil and Tiken Jah Fakoly, while other nights highlight styles including cumbia, afrobeat and global pop.
To see the full lineup and to buy passes and tickets, head to the FEQ website.
Jack White Responds After Uproar Over Taylor Swift Songwriting Comment
This is why we can’t have nice things.
Jack White posted a statement on Instagram Monday evening after numerous publications took his comments in an interview with The Guardian out of context. When discussing poetry and songwriting, White mentioned fellow musician Taylor Swift‘s style of songwriting, and explored his own approach to storytelling when creating music. Unfortunately, online outlets framed his words as a critique of the Tortured Poets star, especially when it came to headlines that quickly circulated on the internet.
“Putting this up for a day and then taking down to just put this to bed,” wrote White in the since-deleted post. “I didn’t say that I think Taylor Swift’s music was ‘boring’ or whatever click bait the net is trying to scrape together. What I was trying to say in an interview I did about poetry and lyric writing, was that I don’t find it interesting at all for ME to write about MYSELF in my own lyric writing and poetry because I think that it could be repetitive for ME to always write about and It could be uninteresting for people who listen to my music to delve into, and that imaginary characters are more attractive to me as a writer.”
White went on to acknowledge the “tremendous success” of Swift and other songwriters who have their own process, while stating that just “because I say I have a way of doing things doesn’t mean that I think that EVERYONE should do it the same way.” He added, “They should do what works for them, And they do, and it is obviously appealing to many people, and I’m glad to hear that.”
When asked by The Guardian in the article published Sunday, if any of any of his songs were entirely autobiographical, White replied, “Not too much. Now it’s become very popular in the Taylor Swift way of pop singers writing about all of their publicly aired break-ups, which I don’t find interesting at all. I think it’s a little bit boring for me to write about myself.”
White further explained, “Even if I’ve had a really interesting day, I feel like I’ve already lived that, I don’t need to go through it every time I sing this song. If it’s something really painful, I’m not going to put this important, painful thing that I went through out there for some idiot on the internet to stomp all over. So I put a percentage of that into what I do and then morph it into somebody else’s character. I can’t really learn about myself until I put it into somebody else’s shoes.”
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In his Monday statement, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee said that at times he has been “made less and less interested in doing interviews” amid the “age of this massive demand for click bait and content.” Any “scrape of anything interesting” can be used as drama and “spit out as bait,” he continued, leading White to “not want to answer questions with any sort of romance or passion or reflection as I’m too busy having to worry about accidentally triggering nonsense like this from so called ‘journalists’ and ‘editors.'”
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He ended his response to the wave of backlash following his interview by saying, “This has always been a problem as it encourages artists to give ‘safe’ answers to any question and stifles artistic vision and imagination and pushes all of us to not share anything interesting, which was one of the points I made about keeping private things private in that same interview. But yeah, content.”
ADVERTISEMENTWhite recently released Jack White: Collected Lyrics & Selected Writing Volume 1, a collection of lyrics from the artist’s solo recordings including No Name, The Raconteurs, and more, plus selected poems and writings by White, and essays by poet Adrian Matejka.