Five years in, Northlands has figured out exactly what it wants to be — and what it wants to be is the camping festival that jam and funk fans in the Northeast have been waiting for. Set in Swanzey, New Hampshire, the festival launched in 2022 and has built its reputation quickly by booking the acts that this community actually wants to see, in a setting designed for the camping festival experience from the ground up.
The 2026 edition marks the fifth annual, and the lineup reflects a festival that has earned its place on the regional calendar. Joe Russo’s Almost Dead tops the bill — JRAD, as they are universally known — bringing their high-octane Grateful Dead interpretations to a crowd that will know every note and still find something new in the improvisation. The Disco Biscuits deliver their trance-fusion marathon sets. Lotus adds the instrumental progressive funk that festival stages were designed for. Yonder Mountain String Band anchors the acoustic side. Dirty Heads bring the reggae-rock crossover that keeps the daytime stages moving.
Built for Camping
Northlands is a camping festival, and the format is central to the experience. You drive in, you set up camp, and for three days your world contracts to the festival grounds — stages, campfires, late-night sets, morning coffee with new friends, and the kind of slow-paced communal living that only a camping festival can deliver. The Swanzey site has been developed with this model in mind: infrastructure that supports camping comfort without losing the feel of being somewhere genuinely removed from daily life.
The late-night programming deserves specific mention. At festivals like this, the headliner set is often just the warmup for what happens between midnight and dawn — extended DJ sets, improvisational collaborations, and the deep-cut performances that festival veterans plan their schedules around.
New Hampshire from Upstate
Swanzey sits in southwestern New Hampshire, roughly two and a half hours from the Capital Region — a shorter drive than many Upstate New Yorkers realize. The route cuts through Vermont and into the southern New Hampshire countryside, and the distance is easy enough for a full weekend commitment without the feeling of having traveled to another time zone.
For the jam and funk community that circulates through the Northeast festival circuit, Northlands fills a specific slot on the summer calendar: a mid-June camping festival with a lineup curated for exactly this audience, in a setting built for exactly this kind of weekend. Five years of growth suggest the formula is working.
Northlands Music and Arts Festival 2026 runs June 19 through 21 in Swanzey, New Hampshire. Camping is included with all ticket types. Full lineup and details at northlandslive.com.