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View all search resultsLaLaLa Festival 2026: The art of finding something you didn’t come for
At its best, LaLaLa Festival turns a carefully programmed weekend into an exercise in musical serendipity, with smaller stages offering discoveries beyond the big names.
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Larger than life: The Flaming Lips perform on the first day of the 2026 LaLaLa Festival on Aug. 22, 2026, at Jakarta International Expo (JIExpo) Kemayoran in Central Jakarta. The set featured four enormous inflatable pink robots during “Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots Pt. 1,” alongside fan favorites including “She Don't Use Jelly” and “Fight Test.” (Courtesy of LaLaLa Festival/-)
The best thing about a music festival is often the artist you did not come to see.
That is becoming harder to experience outside festivals. Streaming platforms have made discovering music almost effortless, but they have also become good at predicting what we already like.
A festival works differently: a timetable, several stages competing for attention, friends asking you to move, and music from a stage you had not planned to visit.
LaLaLa Festival's eighth edition, held Aug. 22 and 23 at Jakarta International Expo (JIExpo) Kemayoran in Central Jakarta, seemed interested in that kind of discovery. Across four stages, it brought together international headliners, established favorites and emerging artists who could easily disappear beneath the larger names on the poster.
Moura Saffanah, LaLaLa's marketing specialist, described this as one of the things festivals can offer that streaming cannot. An algorithm recommends something based on what you already listen to. At a festival, an artist might be discovered simply because their stage is nearby, a friend wants to see them, or something good catches the ear while passing by.
The Flaming Lips were never going to be easy to miss. Their set moved through “The Stars Are So Big... I Am So Small... Do I Stand a Chance?”, “Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots Pt. 1” and “Pt. 2”, “A Spoonful Weighs a Ton” and “True Love Will Find You in the End.”
Four enormous inflatable pink robots appeared during “Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots Pt. 1”, followed by “She Don't Use Jelly” and “Fight Test.”
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