Stern Grove Festival unveils awesome 2025 lineup and new ticketing system

If there’s one thing the Stern Grove Festival can be counted on after 88 years of free live music, it’s an eclectic lineup — and 2025’s season is no exception. The country’s oldest nonprofit music festival dropped its list of performers Tuesday, and they run the gamut from dream pop to alt-country to riot grrl to R&B.

Californians dominate the roster for the festival’s 10 consecutive weekends of outdoor performances — and acts with Bay Area roots are strongly represented, too. The season kicks off June 15 with Oakland neo-soul collective the California Honeydrops and horn-heavy funksters the Dip, while Compton native Channel Tres — who played a well-received set at last year’s Outside Lands — brings his brand of deep-voiced West Coast hip-hop to the stage June 22 with support from Eritrean singer-songwriter Astu. 

Arch-progressive feminist rockers Sleater-Kinney perform with Sacramento garage punks Destroy Boys on June 29, during what happens to be an especially music-filled Pride weekend. And as has long been tradition for Stern Grove, the Fourth of July weekend (July 6, to be exact) is allotted to the San Francisco Symphony.

Dream pop multi-instrumentalists Phantogram arrive July 13 with SF’s own psychedelic singer Ha Vey as the opener, while a hipster-baiting bill July 20 brings the summer’s only true “double header” as mashup master Girl Talk shares equal footing with flamboyant nu-disco duo Chromeo.

Then it’s time for the big names. Masked gay cowboy Orville Peck saddles up with outlaw country cowgirl Jaime Wyatt on July 27, Oakland roots-rock powerhouse (and Stern Grove veterans) Michael Franti & Spearhead team up with Bay Area supergroup Black London on Aug. 3, and East Bay R&B icons the Pointer Sisters join forces with Berkeley rapper Lyrics Born on Aug. 10. (Prior to Tuesday, this was the only announced act.) 

As ever, Stern Grove closes with the Big Picnic on Aug. 16 and 17, featuring reggae royalty brothers Damian Marley and Stephen Marley. The final performance is by none other than the 81-year-old Queen of Motown herself, Diana Ross, who led the all-time best-selling girl group, the Supremes, before embarking on a singular solo career.

Sigmund Stern Recreation Grove is a midsize park with a capacity of only 10,000, so space for fans to spread out blankets can be hard to come by. Given high demand, festival organizers have scrapped the online scramble policy for 2025 and replaced it with a randomized lottery system. Six weeks before each performance, there will be a weeklong period to sign up, and winners will be notified four weeks prior to the show. Stern Grove promises the system is “bot-protected.”

If you don’t get lucky? Some 1,000 physical tickets will be available at “community box offices” throughout the city (locations TBD). Volunteering is another way in, and superfans can always shell out $2,000 to reserve a table for 10. If you’ve just got to hear Diana Ross sing “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough,” then you know what to do.