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50 free Coachella trivia questions with answers — music quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This Coachella trivia quiz covers the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival from its unlikely beginnings to its status as the most famous music festival in the world. It starts in 1993, when Pearl Jam played a polo field in Indio to dodge Ticketmaster, and follows promoter Paul Tollett through the money-losing 1999 debut, the missing year 2000, the AEG buyout, camping, the third day and the second weekend. Then come the sets everyone talks about: Daft Punk's pyramid, Prince, Roger Waters's runaway pig, Paul McCartney blowing the curfew, the Tupac 'hologram', Beyoncé's Homecoming, Frank Ocean's melted ice rink, Bad Bunny and Blackpink breaking barriers, and Lady Gaga becoming the second woman to headline twice. There are also questions on the tents named after deserts, the Stagecoach country festival that shares the field, the YouTube livestream and the lawsuits against anyone using the suffix 'chella'. Every answer is checked against Wikipedia's articles on the festival, its venue and its promoters, and each explanation adds one further fact. Ideal for festival veterans, pop-culture quiz nights and anyone planning a first trip to the desert.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01In which California city is Coachella held?
Indio
The Empire Polo Club sits in the Coachella Valley of the Colorado Desert, about 22 miles southeast of Palm Springs.
Q 02Which band's 1993 Empire Polo Club concert, staged to dodge Ticketmaster, seeded Coachella?
Pearl Jam
Almost 25,000 fans came out for the Vs. Tour show, proving the polo grounds could handle a big crowd.
Q 03Which promotion company organises Coachella?
Goldenvoice
It has been a subsidiary of AEG since Paul Tollett sold it for $7 million in March 2001, and it also runs Stagecoach.
Q 04In which month was the very first Coachella held in 1999?
October
It came three months after the riots and fires of Woodstock '99, and the well-behaved crowd earned it the nickname 'the anti-Woodstock'.
Q 05Which three acts headlined the first Coachella in 1999?
Beck, Tool and Rage Against the Machine
Tickets were $50 a day, attendees got a free bottle of water, and Goldenvoice still lost $850,000.
Q 06How much money did the promoter lose on the first Coachella?
About $850,000
The headliners agreed to deferred pay, and Tollett said the company struggled for almost two years to survive.
Q 07What happened to Coachella in the year 2000?
It was not held at all
Tollett blamed too many festivals in Southern California; the site hosted the EDM event Nocturnal Wonderland instead.
Q 08Which reunited band saved the single-day 2001 Coachella by agreeing to headline?
Jane's Addiction
Perry Farrell's group stepped in when the event was struggling to book a headliner; 32,000 people came.
Q 09Which Palm Desert band became the first local act to play Coachella, in 2002?
Queens of the Stone Age
That year Björk and Oasis headlined and Siouxsie and the Banshees reunited.
Q 10In which year did Coachella first allow on-site camping?
2003
Indio approved 2,252 camping spots with up to four people each, the same year Red Hot Chili Peppers and Beastie Boys headlined.
Q 11Coachella's first sellout, in 2004 with Radiohead and the Cure, featured which reunited band?
The Pixies
For the first time the crowd included fans from all 50 states; 110,000 attended over two days.
Q 12Which duo's 2006 pyramid-shaped stage is among the most memorable Coachella performances?
Daft Punk
The same year Madonna played to an overflowing dance tent while Depeche Mode and Tool headlined.
Q 13Coachella expanded to three days in which year?
2007
The change came alongside the launch of Stagecoach, which made a long-term lease of the polo grounds financially viable.
Q 21Which reunited hip-hop duo headlined the Friday of Coachella 2014?
Outkast
General admission sold out in under 20 minutes and the festival grossed a then-record $78.3 million.
Q 22Who made a surprise appearance during Drake's weekend-one headline set in 2015?
Madonna
AC/DC and Jack White were the other headliners as the festival set records for tickets sold and gross.
Q 23How many people attended Coachella in 2017, when it grossed $114.6 million?
250,000
Radiohead, Lady Gaga and Kendrick Lamar headlined after Beyoncé withdrew on doctors' advice while pregnant.
Q 14Which country music festival did Coachella's promoter launch at the same site in 2007?
Stagecoach
It runs the weekend after Coachella and is the largest and highest-grossing country festival in the world.
Q 15Whose inflatable prop pig flew away during his 2008 Coachella headline set?
Roger Waters
That year the festival failed to sell out for the first time since 2003 and lost money on its big-name fees.
Q 16By how many minutes did Paul McCartney overrun the strict curfew at Coachella 2009?
54
Two nights later the festival cut the Cure's power after they went 30 minutes over.
Q 17What ticketing change did Coachella make in 2010 that drew mixed reactions?
It sold three-day passes only
Jay-Z, Muse and Gorillaz headlined and thousands of fans broke through the fences that year.
Q 18Since which year has YouTube livestreamed Coachella?
2011
The first weekend went out on three channels; AXS TV later televised weekend two.
Q 19Coachella first ran on two identical weekends in which year?
2012
Rolling Stone called it 'a very risky move'; Tollett wanted to meet demand without overcrowding the field.
Q 20A projection of which late rapper appeared alongside Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg at Coachella 2012?
Tupac Shakur
Though called a hologram, it used the Musion Eyeliner system, a modern version of the Victorian Pepper's ghost illusion.
Q 24Which small tent, introduced in 2017, hosts punk rock and Latin acts?
Sonora
Yuma arrived in 2013 for underground DJs, while Gobi and Mojave take their names from deserts.
Q 25Which large hangar-like tent generally hosts Coachella's top electronic dance music acts?
Sahara
It was expanded to 80 feet high in 2013 and rebuilt 25 percent larger in 2018 on the neighbouring Eldorado Polo Club.
Q 26Beyoncé's 2018 headline set, nicknamed Beychella, paid tribute to what?
Historically Black colleges and universities
It featured a marching band and majorettes, a Destiny's Child reunion, and drew 458,000 simultaneous YouTube viewers.
Q 27Beyoncé's 2018 performance made her the first what to headline Coachella?
African-American woman
The Weeknd and Eminem were the other headliners, and the whole festival reached 41 million livestream viewers.
Q 28Who became Coachella's youngest ever headliner in 2019, at 25?
Ariana Grande
She was only the festival's fourth female headliner; Justin Timberlake had reportedly been booked before bruising his vocal cords.
Q 29Which two years did Coachella skip because of the COVID-19 pandemic?
2020 and 2021
The 2020 lineup of Rage Against the Machine, Travis Scott and Frank Ocean was postponed to October before being cancelled outright.
Q 30Who pulled out of Coachella 2022 two weeks before, leaving Swedish House Mafia and the Weeknd to fill in?
Kanye West
Arcade Fire were quietly added to the schedule that year without headline billing.