Apr 10, 2026 10:00am IST
Diljit Dosanjh, AP Dhillon, Sid Sriram, Hanumankind: Indian Artists Who’ve Rocked at Coachella
Coachella 2026 – the festival’s 25th edition will be held this weekend in Indio, California, with Justin Bieber, Sabrina Carpenter and Karol G headlining what is shaping up to be one of the most talked about lineups in years. As the world tunes in, it is worth looking back at how Indian artists have made their way to the festival.
Ritesh D’Souza (B.R.E.E.D), 2015
Mumbai-born electronic music producer Ritesh D’Souza took the Do LaB stage in 2015 alongside vocalist Tara Mae, setting fast-paced electronic beats to the nadaswaram. He had moved to Los Angeles from Mumbai just two years earlier with the intention of taking Indian sound into international spaces. The first Indian artist ever to perform at Coachella, D’Souza’s set barely made the news at the time. A decade later, it reads like the first chapter of something much bigger.
Raveena Aurora, 2022
Raveena Aurora, the New York-raised Sikh Indian-American artist known for blending R&B and soul with South Asian instrumentation, took the Mojave stage as the first Indian woman to perform at Coachella. She arrived in full regalia with bindis, maang tikka and elaborate jewelry and performed her album, “Asha’s Awakening.” The moment that went everywhere was when she performed a surprise cover of “Dum Maro Dum” from the 1971 Bollywood film “Hare Krishna Hare Ram.” An international crowd was singing along to a Bollywood classic.
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Diljit Dosanjh, 2023
Diljit Dosanjh became the first mainstream Indian artist and the first Punjabi artist to perform at Coachella, delivering a set performed entirely in Punjabi. He shared a bill with BLACKPINK and Björk. It was the moment Indian music stopped being a niche conversation at global festivals and became a headline. This was where the scale of the moment first came into focus and was recognized globally.
AP Dhillon & Sid Sriram, 2024
Coachella 2024 sent two very different Indian artists to the same festival in the same year. AP Dhillon, the Punjabi-Canadian artist, who brings Punjabi lyrics and mixes them with trap and hip-hop, was brought to the desert after following Diljit’s footsteps. It was pure arena-level energy. On the same lineup, Sid Sriram became the first South Indian artist to perform at Coachella, carrying Carnatic-influenced music along with R&B, jazz and indie rock to a stage that had never heard anything quite like it. Two sounds, with two completely different corners of Indian music, both delivering.
Hanumankind, Indo Warehouse and Shannon K, 2025
India’s biggest Coachella year yet had performances of Kerala-born rapper Hanumankind, whose track “Big Dawgs” had broken the Billboard Global 200’s Top 10 and became the first Indian hip-hop artist at the festival. He opened his set with an entrance by chenda drummers and closed with the song “Big Dawgs”, which made him a global name. New York-based collective Indo Warehouse brought South Asian house music to the desert, dhol beats, garba rhythms and a full cultural statement. Shannon K, daughter of Bollywood playback legend Kumar Sanu, became the first Indian-origin indie artist to perform at Coachella, adding yet another first.
For 2026, Coachella unfolds this weekend with its 25th edition, with one of the biggest lineups and will be streaming live on YouTube.
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