For many of the attendees at this year’s Girls Just Wanna Weekend festival in Mexico, one of the highlights of the four-day gathering came when founder Brandi Carlile stepped out to join co-headliner the Chicks for what can rightly be called one of the signature songs of the 21st century, “Not Ready to Make Nice.” While the duet might have happened under any circumstance where these two artists were set to join forces, it felt especially trenchant, in these tropical climes, given the topical climate back home. The audience of about 5,000, consisting primarily of women, listened to Carlile do her take on a guest verse and then sang or shouted along with the chorus of the Chicks’ almost exactly 20-year-old anthem as if their lives, pride, anger and glee depended on it. Tom Petty’s “I Won’t Back Down” might also serve a sort of universal anthem of defiance, but in “Not Ready to Make Nice,” indomitable women in particular have had — still have — a rallying cry of their own.
But the other thing about Carlile joining Natalie Maines and the Chicks? Nothing says totally making nice like three-part harmony expanded into four-. And Girls Just Wanna Weekend is about nothing if not about women and non-binary people coming together in a spirit of harmony, figuratively and very, very literally… with just an undercurrent of FAFO activist energy bubbling underneath.
Girls Just Wanna Weekend is often characterized, fairly accurately, as a once-a-year modern update of Lilith Fair, with Carlile picking up the flag for a women-based festival that Sarah McLachlan set down. But there’s no doubt that the mid-2020s are feeling more threatening in many ways to much of the core audience than the late ‘90s did. And so the issue arises each January as to whether “the Brandi bubble” — as attendees regularly refer to the festival as — is a place for pure pop-feminist escapism for a weekend south, or whether concerns affecting the largely female, largely gay audience can be kept in mind without popping the rare sense of safety felt by nearly everyone involved.
Carlile acknowledged that possible dichotomy between girls just wanting to have fun and just wanting to fret about the world in her opening toast (following a land-acknowledgement prelude overseen by Mexican hosts).
“The land acknowledgement is a big deal. What I’m doing right now is just about fun,” she said, holding a champagne glass, standing alongside her bandmates Phil and Tim Hanseroth. “But I think to myself, when I’m falling asleep, how can I give everybody permission to have fun when things are so hard? And it’s a complicated question because none of us want to breed apathy; we want to breed activism, and so we don’t know exactly how to exist in both ways sometimes, do we? We don’t know how to be heartbroken and full of joy at the same time. But joy is essential to resistance.
“You can resist all you want,” she continued, “but you won’t do it for long if you don’t know how to recharge your batteries, rest, look inward and have fun. It is resistance, and it’s the kind of resistance that is contagious, that calls other people into resistance —the irresistible resistance of joy. And that’s what I want you to be thinking about this weekend. I want you to have so much fun, but I want to recharge your batteries so that we can go home and go about the work that we all know that we need to do the things that are keeping us up at night. But you’re already doing it. You are already doing it.”
With that, she dedicated the evening’s performances to Renee Good, and announced a vigil to be held in her honor the following evening (Alex Pretti had not yet been slain at that point). And then, glasses aloft, she offered the festival’s traditional kick-off words: “Bottoms up, bitches.”
Girls Just Wanna Weekend is one of the warmest festivals it’s possible to experience during the winter months, although, if we’re talking purely in terms of temperature, it shares that honor with some of the other fests that 100x Presents in the Cancun area in January (including ones headlined or curated by Noah Kahan, Luke Bryan and Dave Matthews). It might be the warmest festival all year if heat is being measured in friendship, nonjudgmental acceptance and a shared sense of social empathy as unifying factors.
Jensen McRae at Arroba Nat at Brandi Carlile’s Girls Just Wanna Weekend 2026 Music Festival held at Barcelo Maya Riviera in Cancun, Mexico
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There may be a trickle-down factor at play there, symbolically and otherwise, with the festival’s figurehead being the woman who is the best known among all pop stars for being eager to share her stage on just about any occasion, whether with elder legends or complete unknowns. Practically unique among the new wave of rocker-led festivals, Carlile is likely to jump on stage for a duet with most of the performances featured through a four-day weekend — not just with the Chicks and fellow headliner Sam Smith but artists like Jensen McRae, Lucius, CMAT, August Ponthier and Jasmine.4.t, not to mention her singing harmony with every non-pro guest picked to participate in the annual round of poolside “Brandi-oke.”
Brandi Carlile and Sam Smith at Girls Just Wanna Weekend in Mexico, Jan. 17, 2026
Hanna Hanseroth
Backstage on night 3, Carlile talked with Variety about some of the dichotomies she’s juggling as the festival gets bigger. Presenting a female-centric bill for a female-centric audience hardly puts any limits on the kind of music being performed, when it reflects Carlile’s wide spectrum of tastes. She grew up wanting to be either Tanya Tucker or Elton John, at any given time in her girlhood, and you could see echoes of both those primary influences in a festival where the Chicks and Smith were her co-toppers.
“That’s so queer, to be able to have both,” Carlile said, smiling after Smith’s ballad-filled but powerhouse set. “You know, it’s a beautiful thing. Sam was just talking about how we don’t do binaries with fashion. We don’t do binaries with genres, either.”
Protecting the relative intimacy of the festival has been a challenge Carlile has taken on, keeping a substantial focus on affinity groups and seminars during the day, while growing the event for an audience that may just come for the bands. On one level, it’s a big rock show, at least at nighttime, right?
“It is a big rock show,” agreed Carlile — “a big rock show with huge production and big screens and fog machines and huge speakers. And it sounds huge; you know, it sounds like Bonnaroo out there. But it’s not that. And I’m still mystified by the evolution of the festival and how it’s gotten to this point; how we’re getting people like the Chicks and Shania Twain [one of last year’s headliners] and Sam to come out and do this.
“But it has a scaled feel to it, in the sense of the dynamics,” she continued. “The interpersonal part of the festival has felt smaller than ever. And that, I think, is my goal, is to create big drama, big moments, big sweeping, loud, profound shows, but then a family environment the rest of the time. So I think that’s a tricky balance to strike, because how do you make something feel like it’s a really big deal and make people feel like they’ve come home?”
Brandy Clark and Shelby Lynne at Brandi Carlile’s Girls Just Wanna Weekend 2026 Music Festival held at Barcelo Maya Riviera in Cancun, Mexico
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Some of the artist comments during the weekend reflected how paying attendees typically feel. “We woke up in paradise with a bunch of queers and peers,” said the rising artist Autumn Nicholas, kicking off the pool stage on Friday. “I’m reminded of what a utopia Brandi Carlile created here,” said Brandy Clark, as an aside during a daytime songwriting seminar she was doing with fellow Americana icon Shelby Lynne on Sunday. “This is the greatest festival on earth,” exulted the trans rocker Jasmine.4.t, who had other fests like a well-received stop at Glastonbury to compare it to.
Backstage, Sam Smith said, “From what I’d seen online and just from knowing Brandi over the last few years, I had a feeling of what this would be, but being on stage tonight and actually seeing and feeling the audience, the kindness in the whole festival is incredible. And something I’ve never actually felt before on stage — I felt very safe and just free to be myself on stage. I felt no judgment. It’s way more beautiful than I could ever have imagined.”
Shelby Lynne came to this year’s GJWW to do a daytime stage chat with Clark, then stuck around for the closing ‘90s tribute celebration, performing a cover of Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit” that brought the house down as a highlight of the night or even fest. I caught up with her after the set and she explained that she had offered up a little prayer to Kurt Cobain before going on, which very much seemed to manifest itself in some Method performing.
“I’m honored to be invited,” Lynne said. “I always thought for years, maybe they don’t like me, but I’m thrilled to death, to play with Brandi’s band and have the love here. Everybody’s free. There’s no judgment. You know, somebody said to me earlier, ‘If you lose your child, it’ll come back with a snack and a sunscreen on,’ and it’s true, it’s that kinda loving. There’s not any bullshit here. And the music. I mean, come on, it’s such an eclectic choice; Brandi’s just killing that, with bringing in people that matter and new acts. I love Lucius, and I got to meet with my good friend Shawn Colvin, and we just laughed for about four days.”
CMAT performs at Girls Just Wanna Weekend
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And then there was CMAT, the Irish singer who has already become a European sensation, exulting in a sensational reception for her mainstage set at GJWW, which some attendees went online to cite as the most thrilling full-length performance of the weekend. “This whole thing is a cult — and I’m joining it!” a surprised-seeming CMAT yelped toward the end of her set, as the crowd of about 5,000 roared their eagerness to induct her.
Out in the audience on the night the Chicks headlined, I spotted a group of five women all dressed in nude-style bodysuits with words and slogans stencilled onto their bodies. This was an homage to the then-Dixie Chicks’ famous “naked” Entertainment Weekly cover of 2003, fronting an article in which they first explained and stood up behind the anti-war, anti-George W. Bush concert talk that got the group canceled in country music. Having an intimate connection to that particular cover, I went over and chatted them up, and found that, although they hail from different cities, they dress up thematically for every night of every GJJW, a tradition they have kept up since year 3 of the festival, after meeting randomly in year 2.
“The first year we just showed up as newbies and didn’t really know what we were doing,” said Lindsey Sargent, who hails from Seattle, “and by year two we made custom floaties, custom bathing suits, custom costumes. Now it’s whole months of planning and Zoom calls to get all the costumes ordered. These women are in my life because of Brandi, because of the festival. The community that she’s created, it’s incredible.”
On a personal note, Sargent explained how attending GJWW heals a festering injury from her youth. “I was a big nerd growing up, and summer camp for me was a ton of anxiety and mean girls,” she explained. “And now as an adult, I get to go to summer camp and heal the childhood wounds from not being enough, not having the girlfriends, not fitting in. Here, we go hard and we do it, and I relive a piece of my youth that was painful as an adult and just come and have the most joy.”
Asked about past GJWW performance highlights from having attended almost every year, Sargent spoke about empathy playing a role even in choosing a favorite for that. “Janelle Monáe was insane,” she said. “But the year Wynonna was here right after her mom had passed away, in my heart, I could feel Wynonna’s sadness. There was the sweetest trans person up in the front row that had a sign they were holding up for Wynona, and she acknowledged them — they had this moment. Then they took off the most ugly, huge binder bra you’ve ever seen and threw it up on stage, and Wynonna was like, ‘No one has ever thrown a bra at me before!’ And all bets were off at that point — everyone was throwing bras at Wynonna, and Brandi’s running around the stage, picking up bras, hanging them on her mic stand. She showed up at all the events, and we were just giving her love because we knew she was in a moment of her life where she needed some lady power, so we gave it to her.”
Sam Smith might have seemed to at least a few festivalgoers like a left-field pick, when virtually everyone who had been on the bills for the previous six editions of the festival had either been female-identifying or started their careers as such. Carlile called Smith the first non-binary headliner at the festival, and some attendees pointed out that that wasn’t strictly true, when Monae had come out as non-binary not long before co-headling GJWW — but it was accurate inasmuch as Smith was the first such guest star to have initially risen to stardom with a he/him identity.
Carlile said backstage that imagining Smith could be part of GJWW came from “thinking about how cool it would be to celebrate Sam’s kind of feminine energy at this festival and how needed that was to expand our understanding of the feminine, to include Sam in a really profound way. And I think tonight I saw that play out, and it was stunning.” [Read here for Variety‘s full joint backstage interview with Smith and Carlile.]
Another artist who has changed pronouns, much more recently in this case, was August Ponthier, who played the pool stage for a second year in a row, but for only the first time as August. Last year, the acclaimed young pop singer-songwriter was she/her, and determinedly lesbian, instead of they/them, which was announced just weeks before this year’s festival.
“Last year I played here under a different first name, in a different mindset,” said Ponthier, taking a poolside break. “I’ve always had big support from other LGBTQ+ people, but there really is nothing like this, at least not that I’ve been to. And last year, being able to be in a space where I not only was around queer people my age, but queer people who are my past, present, and future all in one place together, really set my intention for the year, and I don’t think it’s a coincidence that I played Girls Just Wanna before I went through a lot of personal change. That experience kind of carried me into a year where I made a lot of decisions about wanting to live my life the way that I’ve always wanted to live it.”
Brandi Carlile and August Ponthier duet at Girls Just Wanna Weekend 2026 Music Festival held at Barcelo Maya Riviera in Cancun, Mexico
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“Brandi in general has really made me feel like a lot more things are possible,” they continued. “I think I really boxed myself in, emotionally, and I was afraid to make big choices or afraid to exist in the way that made me feel the most comfortable because I had this imaginary audience around me telling me that maybe I was someone who could be voted on — like maybe I should only do what people find the most comfortable or the most interesting or most palatable. Being around Brandi has really made me value being a trailblazer, because she is a trailblazer, and her seeing herself in me makes me feel like that’s possible.”
Carlile offered musical and not just moral support by joining Ponthier to duet on the title song of August’s upcoming album “Everywhere Isn’t Texas,” twice, first during the founder’s own headlining set and then later during the younger artist’s acoustic pool performance. It’s a song about Ponthier grappling with leaving their home state for more queer-hospitable climes, but still having affection for it. “I think the reason that that song connected with her is because she is an artist that makes protest music… That song is about how I grew up in Texas and I felt like I loved it, but it did not love me back. I felt like I was being pushed out, kind of like the way white blood cells will push out an infection, and I didn’t want to feel like I was diseased or wrong or made wrong. And because I can’t stop thinking about home and all the things that happen there because Texas is a leader in politics, it became the title of the album. It just is the most complicated and deep love of my life, and it resonated with Brandi, who’s not someone that’s afraid to talk about politics or to stand up for what she believes in. It means a lot that a major artist would be so brave and talk about a state that is really polarizing and sing alongside with me.” Of Texas generally, Ponthier says, “We can love something and be critical of it at the same time and want better for it.”
Ponthier was on their way from this chat to a trans and non-binary affinity gathering hosted by Jasmine.4.t, the festival’s first mainstage trans performer. Not all the daytime activities were as serious as all that: Attendees could attend or participate in a soccer game, with Olympian Abby Wambaugh as coach; a ‘90s costume contest judged by SistaStrings; drag bingo with Anania; or a Carlile tour trivia contest with the Hanseroth Twins.
Kate Moennig and Leisha Hailey speak at Brandi Carlile’s Girls Just Wanna Weekend 2026 Music Festival held at Barcelo Maya Riviera in Cancun, Mexico
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Meanwhile, in one of the few instances in which fans have ever had to make a choice between Carlile and the Hanseroths, overlapping with the trivia contest the brothers hosted was Brandi’s on-stage interview with the stars of “The L-Word” who recently released a book titled “So Gay for You,” Leisha Hailey and Kate Moennig. (The two actors teased during the conversation that they had a big announcement they’d wanted to make there that would have to wait another couple weeks, because of contracts not yet signed.) The weightier fare in the daytime events schedule included a showing of the Oscar-nominated (and Carlile-coproduced) documentary “Come See Me in the Good Light,” with one of the movie’s subjects, Megan Falley, interviewed by Glennon Doyle; a seminar for parents of trans and non-binary teens; a BIPOC “centering joy” happy hour; and a workshop titled “Hot & Healthy: Pleasure, Power, and Aging in Our Bodies.”
The focus in that latter seminar on midlife issues was raised in a different way by a comic, Kristin Key, returning for the second year to do a comedy set on the final night. Her focus on “old lesbians” cracked the house up — and, she predicted, would offend a few, even though the fortysomething Key counts herself in that demographic. Getting serious for a moment backstage, Key said, “The difference between a comedy club and thousands of people at Girls Just Wanna Weekend is just the amount of dopamine that gets dripping out of your ears from having that much love thrown at you all at once. You just really just get to live a dream by being on stage and having that much positivity and love come at you.”
On-stage, Key riffed, “I came here last year and it is magical. This place will transform you, and I mean, literally many women walk in married straight ladies and walk out late-in-life lesbians. Not, like, a few… like, a percentage of this audience came to Girls Just Wanna married to Frank and they leave engaged to Veronica. I’m beginning to suspect that Brandi puts subliminal messages in her songs that turns straight women gay. … They’re just innocently listening at home” — she sang a snippet of “The Story” — “and then they listen to the record backwards: ‘Your husband doesn’t please you.’” Key also referred to a moment from opening night when Leisha Hailey joined Carlile on stage to duet on “Fake Plastic Trees.” “When you brought out Alice from ‘The L-Word’ to sing Radiohead,” Key said, “I mean, there wasn’t a dry pair of Woxers in Mexico.”
The fact that Key can do a 35-minute set in front of thousands of people consisting 95% of lesbian humor may raise the question: How gay do you have to be to attend Girls Just Wanna Weekend? The answer is, not very, although at least liking lesbians enough to laugh with and not at their culture surely counts as a prerequisite. The audience for GJWW probably skews — in a very unscientific survey — about 90% female and about 70% queer (including gay men). But straight women and men and cis couples, with and without children in tow, are plentiful enough, and all apparently enjoying a bubble that presents a happy fantasy of just how beneficient an actual matriarchy might feel, even for those not part of that cheerfully lopsided majority.
Lucius performs at Brandi Carlile’s Girls Just Wanna Weekend
Courtes 100x
One thing that can easily bring any audience of straights and queers or women, men and binary people together, without fail, here or probably anywhere: ‘80s and ‘90s nostalgia. Lucius began the Sunday night mainstage music with a magnificent rendering of Cyndi Lauper’s entire “She’s So Unusual” album. And then, before everyone was sent home to the land of ICE, the closing night of GJWW provided a pure, epic bacchanal of covers from the 1990s, arguably the last era in which there was anything resembling a pop monoculture. Carlile did not sing her planned cover of Whitney Houston’s “I Have Nothing,” having sung with so many artists and fans over the previous four days that she didn’t quite feel up to tackling that summit. But even without taking one last lead vocal, the host was on stage singing backup for a long succession of tribute songs.
Glennon Doyle and Abby Wambach perform at Brandi Carlile’s Girls Just Wanna Weekend 2026 Music Festival held at Barcelo Maya Riviera in Cancun, Mexico
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Highlights, besides the aforementioned Shelby Lynne/Nirvana moment, included: SistaStrings’ Chauntee and Carlile’s new bass player, Solomon Dorsey, doing a sublimely belted version of Celine Dion’s and Andrea Bocelli’s quasi-classical “The Prayer,” complete with Italian verses. Dorsey and Lucius doing another ‘90s movie theme, “A Whole New World,” with the two women of Lucius emerging from behind a magic carpet to bust in with their parts. A Spice Girls homage that had Catherine Carlile joined by British TV host and comic Alan Carr, baring his midriff. Joy Oladokun’s take on the Fugees’ take on “Killing Me Softly.” Mexican singer Arroba Nat rousingly bringing things closer to home with a lone Spanish-language number of the night, Selena’s “Como la Flor.” Wambach and Doyle athletically leaping into one another’s arms during an affectionately pitchy cover of Melissa Etheridge’s “Come to My Window.” The very promising upcomer Autumn Nicholas bittersweetly sewing up “Torn.” Carlile’s brother, Jay, getting in one of the few male lead vocals of the weekend with a sibling version of “Boot Scootin’ Boogie.” And, complete with a kids’ chorus, a closing gospel group-sing of the “Joyful, Joyful” medley from “Sister Act 2.”
The Chicks perform at Brandi Carlile’s Girls Just Wanna Weekend 2026 Music Festival held at Barcelo Maya Riviera in Cancun, Mexico on January 15-19, 2026.
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But the choicest cover of GJWW 7? That may have belonged to the Chicks, who, one night earlier, used their first concert in three years as a chance to bust out a freshly minted cover of Sabrina Carpenter’s “Manchild.” It was ostensibly light-hearted… but given that most in attendance were about to return to a land where manchildren are having a deep and deleterious effect on an entire citizenship’s lives every day, it felt like it fit in right alongside “Not Ready to Make Nice” as a protest song.
Joy Oladokun at Brandi Carlile’s Girls Just Wanna Weekend 2026 Music Festival held at Barcelo Maya Riviera in Cancun, Mexico on January 15-19, 2026.
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Brandi Carlile’s Girls Just Wanna Weekend 2026 Music Festival held at Barcelo Maya Riviera in Cancun, Mexico
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Arroba Nat at Brandi Carlile’s Girls Just Wanna Weekend 2026 Music Festival held at Barcelo Maya Riviera in Cancun, Mexico on January 15-19, 2026.
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Brandi Carlile joins the pool party at Girls Just Wanna Weekend 2026 Music Festival held at Barcelo Maya Riviera in Cancun, Mexico
