Coachella 2025’s first weekend has come and gone, and to say it was absorbing is an understatement. Like every year, Coachella is its own bubble, where even when you arrive back to your campsite or hotel room and check social media, stories flood in about special guests and unforgettable moments from the sets you had to miss.
With performances this year from Lady Gaga, Charli XCX, Green Day, Travis Scott, and Post Malone, plus Missy Elliott, Megan Thee Stallion, Weezer, The Prodigy, T-Pain, Mustard, Jimmy Eat World, Basement Jaxx, and (remarkably) Yo Gabba Gabba!, there simply wasn’t time to see everyone, and the days come and go faster than you’d think.
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The weekend becomes one big blur, a giant mirage; though this year, if you looked around hard enough, you could see past the illusion. A palm tree caught on fire from pyrotechnics. Campers waited hours in the searing heat just to get through security. The economy continues to tank. A pop star named d4vd tried “The Benson Boone” and this ended up happening. Several times this year, it looked like the bubble could really burst, like Coachella’s magical spell could be broken.
Luckily, the magic did stay alive throughout this weekend, and the party continued with some of the festival’s all time best — and in at least one case, worst — performances in Coachella history. YouTube once again housed the livestream, so most individual sets are somewhere on the internet ready to be streamed; but if you’re curious how the whole weekend felt from the grounds, here’s what you didn’t see on the livestream at Coachella 2025.
— Paolo Ragusa
Associate Editor
A Hellish Kickoff at the Campgrounds
As any seasoned Coachella camper could tell you, Day Zero is typically a nice little juicer for the weekend. It’s the perfect opportunity to build bonds with your campmates, wander the grounds, indulge in activities both legal and otherwise, and mentally prepare for the weekend. As dawn breaks over Indio on Thursday morning, the most well-prepared campers begin lining up their vehicles in the Polo Fields at 3:30am hoping to snag a prime spot with the closest walk to the festival entrance. The yearly tradition begins with a two to three-hour wait as security meticulously inspects each vehicle, and once they get the all-clear, campers race against the rising desert sun to set up their temporary four-day homes to transform the barren grass into a bustling festival community. But this year, what should’ve been a pre-festival ritual quickly spiraled into unorganized chaos.
Instead of the manageable few hour wait, thousands of campers found themselves shuffling along for up to 12 hours just to enter the campgrounds. Due to the excessively long wait (think four hours just to move a half mile), irritated campers were forced to take measures into their own hands, getting out of their cars to direct traffic, cutting off their water intake so they wouldn’t feel the need to pee, ordering delivery food service straight to their vehicles, or walking a mile to the closest convenience store to re-up on fresh supplies.
It was a brutal kickoff to the vibes-are-up welcome party that Day Zero usually brings. Our only hope is that the lesson was learned Weekend One, and fellow Weekend Two campers will be blessed with an improved set of logistics. — Nicolle Periola
Content shared from consequence.net.