FUJI ROCK FESTIVAL ’26 has wrapped up another annual takeover of Naeba Ski Resort in Yuzawa, Niigata, bringing more than 180 artists from across the globe to 12 stages. More than 70 of the weekend’s performances were streamed free worldwide across three simultaneous channels on the Amazon Music app, Prime Video, and Twitch, carrying the festival a long way past the tens of thousands who made it up the mountain.
The festival debuts of two of arguably Japan’s most visible musical exports, Fujii Kaze and XG, presented under the theme of “Neo-Global Pop”, became cornerstone sets of the weekend, attracting a new wave of festivalgoers to the site.
Fujii Kaze took the Green Stage slot ahead of Khruangbin’s headline, playing to one of the stage’s most densely packed crowds, which had filled the field around an hour ahead of his start. Making a surprise entrance from the sound desk at the centre of the field, Kaze swaggered down the walkway splitting the audience playing an alto saxophone during ‘Garden’, as he made his way to the stage set out in rock formations with a grand piano at the summit.
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Several songs arrived in updated arrangements. ‘Shinunoga E-Wa’ was recast around a three-piece horn section, ‘Kirari’ took on a slower bossa nova tempo, with the opening stretch pulling from his 2020 debut ‘HELP EVER HURT NEVER’ instead of his recent material. He explained prema as unconditional love before leading a call and response on the song of the same name, then closed the set on ‘Hachiko’ with a keytar solo. The set previews his Prema World Tour, which opens in Kaohsiung on October 31st.
XG‘s booking was a rare one for Fuji Rock, which seldom programmes dance-and-vocal acts, with the group arriving on the momentum of ‘THE CORE – 核’, their debut full-length that entered the US Billboard 200 in January and is currently the basis of their world tour.
For their hour on the White Stage, the group assembled a festival-exclusive 16-song setlist, with new transitions between songs and reworked arrangements to suit the live band that joined them on stage.
XG and Kaze’s sets overlapped by 20 minutes. Once Fujii Kaze finished at 8:10pm, enough of the Green Stage crowd crossed the site that entry to the White Stage was restricted for the rest of XG’s performance.
Elsewhere across the weekend, Hi-STANDARD opened the Friday evening on the Green Stage, in their first Fuji Rock appearance since 1999 and their first with ZAX, who took over on drums in September 2025 following the death of founding drummer Akira Tsuneoka in February 2023. “We’re back. It’s been 27 years. We’ve become old men”, Akihiro Namba told the crowd.
The final day set up a head-to-head with Susumu Hirasawa + EJIN and duo Angine de Poitrine in the same evening slot. The Quebec masked instrumental pair had been tipped as one of the weekend’s dark-horse bookings since their profile surged on the back of a viral KEXP session, and were moved off a 40-minute morning appearance at the Red Marquee to a 70-minute evening slot at Field of Heaven. Even after the move, the field was placed under entry restrictions, with the queue extending well beyond the stage.
On the Green Stage at the same time, Hirasawa played immediately before Massive Attack’s headline with one of the weekend’s most elaborate productions. Tesla coils sent lightning across the stage, Maywa Denki’s Qilin laser harp stood at its centre, and masked EJIN performers SSHO and TAZZ flanked Hirasawa and his aluminium-bodied EVO guitar through a set spanning his P-MODEL era and solo work.
FUJI ROCK FESTIVAL ’26 ran from July 24th to 26th, with a reported cumulative attendance of 123,500.
