Who’s Headlining This Year’s Three Rivers Arts Festival?
The lineup for the four-day festival features Suzanne Vega, the Preservation Hall Jazz Band and more.
This year’s Dollar Bank Three Rivers Arts Festival will offer a slate of headlining music performances that span a wide range of genres — even with only four days to work with.
The Preservation Hall Jazz Band, Suzanne Vega, Lisa Loeb and Cautious Clay are among the acts set to take the main stage from June 5-8.
Normally held within the Golden Triangle over 10 days, this year’s festival will be a four-day affair mostly located in the Strip District. The Pittsburgh Cultural Trust is currently developing the new Arts Landing site that will serve as the Arts Festival’s long-term home; that 4-acre space, which will be located along Fort Duquesne Boulevard, will receive a grand opening for the 2026 edition of the Arts Festival (after a soft opening for next year’s NFL Draft). While construction is underway — the site breaks ground this week — a truncated Arts Festival will relocate to the Strip, centralized at the 15th Street Plaza adjacent to Waterfront Place.
The festival begins Thursday, June 5, with Las Cafeteras, a folk and hip-hop influenced Chicano group known for adding live dance to their energetic live performances.
Friday’s show will be headlined by the Preservation Hall Jazz Band, the legendary collective of jazz musicians that have become standard-bearers for the New Orleans jazz tradition; various lineups have been traveling the world under the Preservation Hall banner since 1963, and the group was awarded the National Medal of Arts in 2006. Tiera Kennedy, the country singer-songwriter who last year made an appearance on Beyoncé’s Grammy-winning “Cowboy Carter,” will also perform Friday.
On Saturday, rising R&B star Cautious Clay, who has co-written songs for superstars including Taylor Swift, John Legend and Melanie Martinez, will perform a headlining set. Veteran California hip-hop lineup Souls of Mischief will open Saturday’s show.
Sunday’s concert features a pair of pop-folk performers with mainstream success. The evening will begin with a performance from Lisa Loeb, the guitarist and songwriter whose massive hit “Stay” became a ’90s anthem. Suzanne Vega, whose acclaimed 1987 album “Solitude Standing” featured the radio hits “Luka” and “Tom’s Diner,” will perform the festival’s final set.
All music performances at the festival are free. A full schedule, including details on the rest of the festival’s events, is available here.