Our Top Artist Predictions For When We Were Young 2026

With When We Were Young’s 2025 edition finally wrapped up, now is the time for us to play our favorite guessing game: who will play next year? We got a few guesses correct last year (namely, Panic! At The Disco), while others were pretty far off. With that being said, we’ve got some fun ideas for who could take the stage for the 2026 edition of the Las Vegas festival. Take a look at some of our guesses below, and let us know what you think.

Note: All of these choices are based on speculation and are not to be taken seriously.

My Chemical Romance as ‘The Black Parade
Okay, hear us out. We were pretty convinced that My Chemical Romance would never tour again as The Black Parade alter egos they created in 2006. To our surprise, the band has been traversing the globe with the most over-the-top stage show of their career, selling out stadiums worldwide. The band has announced that they will be taking their tour into 2026, ending with a three-night run at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles, CA (coincidentally, twenty years to the day that The Black Parade was released). There is a glaring gap in their 2026 dates around the time that this festival would take place, and When We Were Young has more than enough capacity to pull off a production of this scale. Yes, the band did play the album in full back in 2024, but nothing like the stage shows they’ve been playing lately. We’re hoping that we’ll get to scream the lyrics again. Long Live Draag.

Paramore
It would echo the first days of the festival when they played right before My Chemical Romance, but we think there is a chance that Paramore could illuminate the night with a hit-filled set. The band has iconic albums that are not either at or almost twenty years of age (2005’s All We Know Is Falling and 2007’s Riot!), and the band has been relatively quiet since wrapping up their tour for This Is Why. We know that with Paramore, a longer break between albums is very common, but whose to say we won’t all be screaming the words to “Hallelujah” again in the desert next year?

From First To Last
Okay, we think it might be time. The Matt Good-fronted band is finally active again, having released a new song with Sleeping With Sirens vocalist Kellin Quinn earlier this year, and they have yet to make an appearance at the festival featuring a genre that they helped popularize in the early aughts. Quinn was set to provide vocal duties for both Sleeping With Sirens and From First To Last on the road this year, but had to step down temporarily due to unforeseen circumstances (and we wish Quinn’s wife a speedy recovery). While there is a gigantic segment of the population (ourselves included) that will always hope for a Sonny Moore one-off reunion, it would be fantastic to see Good, Travis Richter, and Derek Bloom throw down some Dear Diary-era songs under the Las Vegas heat.

The Format
While they’re not quite the band we would think of when it comes to “scene” music, there’s always undoubtedly been a crossover appeal between scene music fans and The Format. The indie-rock act formed by Nate Ruess and Sam Means thrilled audiences with their first two albums, and have since announced both a new album and a full run of comeback shows. We think that there’s a high probability with this one coming true.

Good Charlotte
We think that this pick makes a lot of sense. The band’s previous stop at When We Were Young was in 2023, and since then, they have been playing many more shows and have even released a brand new album, Motel Du Cap. They’ve been a hit at big festivals like Sacramento’s Aftershock, and we’re long overdue in hearing “The Anthem” on the biggest stage possible in front of the world’s most dedicated fans.

Forever The Sickest Kids
We’ll be the first to admit that this seems like the biggest outlier pick on this list - the band has never broken up, but Forever The Sickest Kids hasn’t really done too much since the release of their 2013 album J.A.C.K. They briefly broke up before getting back together in 2017, having only played a handful of shows since then. That being said, the pop-punk quartet (at the time, sextet) had a grasp on the scene. The music. The kitschy lyrics about girls and breakups. The hair. It’s possible we’ll be singing songs from Underdog Alma Mater in 2026.

Never Shout Never
Christofer Drew was scheduled to perform at this year’s festival, bringing a close to the project that he started as a teenager, making YouTube videos on his acoustic guitar and ukulele that saw him skyrocketing in popularity and headlining major venues before he turned 18. A medical emergency caused him to back out of the festival this year, so whose to say that Drew will make a return to the stage and close out the NeverShoutNever project next year?

Photo Credit: Jaime Schultz

Bring Me The Horizon
They have only skyrocketed in popularity, moving from the main support slot at festivals into the headlining positios, and bringing with them an unbelievably massive production. Bring Me The Horizon has gone from “little-deathcore-band-that-could” to full-fledged rockstars over the last sixteen years, reinventing themselves with every album cycle and only getting better with time. They played the festival in its inaugural year, but it doesn’t seem too farfetched to think that they could be even further up on the lineup next year. Time will tell.