Chicago’s ARC Music Festival will expand from three to four days in 2026, the festival announced Tuesday (March 10). The fest is happening Labor Day Weekend, Sept. 4-7, at the city’s Union Park.
“This is something the team has been talking and dreaming about since we expanded from two days to three back in 2022,” ARC partner and lead talent buyer John Curley tells Billboard. “Every year booking the festival, we run into one little problem: we have more incredible artists that we want to book than we have slots on the festival. Expanding to four days allows us to go deeper with our programming.”
As such, in tandem with the expansion news, ARC has also dropped its 2026 lineup, which features a long list of producers, including Sara Landry performing her Eternalism show, Ki/Ki, The Blessed Madonna, Nia Archives, Michael Bibi, Chris Stussy, Anyma, Underworld, Cloonee and Chase & Status.
The event will also include a series of special b2b and b3bs, along with a new stage area dubbed The Midway, which takes its name from Chicago’s historic public park Midway Plaisance and nods to both the city’s Midway International Airport and the architectural legacy of the original Midway Gardens, an indoor/outdoor entertainment complex in the city’s Hyde Park neighborhood.
And as has been ARC’s tradition since the festival launched in 2021, the bill features a list of house music pioneers, with the festival itself intended to celebrate the city’s history as the genre’s birthplace. This year this contingent includes Green Velvet, Honey Dijon and Derrick Carter.
Tickets for ARC Music Festival 2026 go on sale March 13.
“Six years in, and ARC really feels like it’s in its own lane,” says Curley. “There’s a global energy to the weekend, but ARC is still very much a Chicago festival in its DNA. That energy gives ARC a character you don’t really find anywhere else.
“It feels like a family reunion for the global house and techno community,” he continues. “Artists really lean into that, you can feel them bend their sound toward Chicago, see the emotion in their eyes as the sun sets into the skyline. There’s a feeling of legacy when artists play here that gives every set more weight and more staying power.”
See the lineup below:
ARC Music Festival 2026
Courtesy of Infamous PR
