ACL at 25: The xx and Twenty One Pilots Close Out a Rain-Tested Weekend One

AUSTIN, TEXAS — SUNDAY, OCTOBER 4, 2026 — Two days down, one to go. Austin City Limits' 25th-anniversary weekend is at the gate of its closing day, and tonight Zilker Park ends Weekend One the way it started: with two headliners in a perfectly even split. The xx take the T-Mobile stage at 8:30 p.m. CT; Twenty One Pilots take the American Express stage at the exact same time.

It has been a wet and loud two days. Friday opened under a flood watch, with the National Weather Service giving Austin an 80 percent chance of rain and a Level 2 flash-flood risk out of four. The festival's organizer, C3 Presents, told Austin's KVUE that “proactive preparations are already underway in Zilker Park including clearing drains, prepositioning equipment and accelerating our setup schedule to protect the park.” The grounds held. By Sunday morning, the forecast had swung the festival's way: cloudy skies, a high near 79°, and only a slight chance of rain — the driest day of the weekend.

Friday: Charli turned it into a club

Friday night belonged to Charli xcx, who headlined the American Express stage with a set that turned the park into a dance floor. As The Daily Texan described it: “Smoke emerged from a small white ring atop a pyramid-like structure, strobe lights flashed and the crowd chanted as Charli xcx walked onstage holding a mic and a stand,” The Daily Texan wrote. She opened with “Rock Music,” worked through the crowd-pleasing TikTok moment of “Apple,” and rolled through “Girl, so confusing” with an all-female dance troupe grinding through strobe-lit choreography.

The night's biggest surprise arrived midway through the set, when Charli welcomed Troye Sivan to the stage. The two co-headlined last year's Sweat Tour, and at Zilker Park they gave live debuts to “Le boy” and “Party,” two tracks from Sivan's new album She's The Best, due out next week, per Stereogum's reporting from the grounds. Charli also performed the Brat remix of “Girl, so confusing” — with Lorde herself in the audience, a detail that would pay off less than 24 hours later.

Across the park on the T-Mobile stage, Skrillex closed out Friday with a headlining set that carried its own kind of scarcity: he is a Weekend One exclusive, playing Friday only and absent from the second weekend entirely.

Saturday: Lorde's night, with the city's toughest choice

Saturday made fans choose. Lorde headlined the T-Mobile stage at 8:15 p.m. — her Virgin-era return to a festival she has been orbiting all weekend — while RÜFÜS DU SOL took the American Express stage at 8:30 p.m. with their large-scale production. It was the weekend's unavoidable clash, and it repeats exactly: the Saturday bill is identical across both weekends, per the festival's published schedule.

The day around the headliners was stacked. Bleachers played opposite Lorde's lead-in on the AmEx side, Lykke Li slotted in before her on T-Mobile, and Lola Young, Young Miko, Suki Waterhouse, Finn Wolfhard, Snow Strippers, Balu Brigada, and Palace all drew their own crowds across the stages. Notably, RÜFÜS DU SOL were absent from the published livestream lineup — the only major headliner all weekend whose set exists only for the people in the park.

What today holds

Sunday's undercard is where ACL's reputation for discovery gets its close-up. Geese, Blood Orange, Parcels, SOFI TUKKER, the War on Drugs, Saint Motel, Cannons, Claire Rosinkranz, Audrey Hobert, Max McNown, Dexter and the Moonrocks, and Stella Lefty all play across the afternoon and evening — a run that spans guitar-rock, dance-pop, and R&B without a weak link in it.

For everyone not in the park, the full closing day streams live on Disney+ and Hulu, the festival's official streaming home for Weekend One. This marks the first year the festival has streamed globally on Disney+; previously it was available only in the U.S. on Hulu, per Rolling Stone's streaming guide. Sunday's published broadcast runs from 3:35 p.m. CT through the end of the night across two channels: the T-Mobile-side channel carries Dexter and the Moonrocks, Audrey Hobert, Max McNown, Geese, Blood Orange, Twenty One Pilots at 8:45 p.m. CT, and Parcels to close, while the American Express-side channel runs Stella Lefty, Claire Rosinkranz, Cannons, SOFI TUKKER, Saint Motel, The xx at 8:45 p.m. CT, and the War on Drugs. Note the second weekend will not stream at all.

And there is, as always, a second weekend to consider. Kings of Leon replace Skrillex as Friday headliners for Oct. 9–11, and the second weekend adds Houndmouth to Sunday's bill. Brandon Flowers, CMAT, and Rebecca Black are Weekend One exclusives — see them today or not at all.

Twenty-five years of Zilker

The anniversary frame matters. ACL is one of the few American festivals to survive a quarter century in the same park, and the relationship with Austin goes beyond the ticket line: since 2006, the festival and the Austin Parks Foundation have generated more than $79 million toward improvements to Zilker Park and parks across the city, including $8.5 million in 2025 alone. More than 100 performances across nine stages will play out over the two weekends.

Our festival desk has more on this fall's festival circuit, and Saturday's wrap-up covers everything else that happened while Austin was watching the stages.