FIRST WAVE ANNOUNCEMENT

Our 2026 artist leak and flash sale is officially here!

As we gear up for the 47th Calgary Folk Music Festival, powered by ATB, we’re thrilled to leak eight artists to whet your appetite while you await the full announcement April 8.

Mark July 23 - 26, 2026 at Prince’s Island Park in your calendars for an enticing, soul and life-affirming four-day staycation or destination adventure. Enjoy your favourite artists plus discover your next musical obsession as you wander between 8 stages, filled with 65 genre-defying artists from around the corner and the globe on one beautiful Island.

Drum roll, please! Valerie June weaves deep and contemporary, idiosyncratic and fashionable, mystical and earthy sounds on Thursday night’s mainstage.

Friday night’s line-up includes Goldie Boutilier’s cinematic exploration of tragic romance, glamour and melancholia.

Rebel traditionalist Marty Stuart and His Fabulous Superlatives close Saturday night’s mainstage with rockabilly and surf-rock rave ups, swinging country classics and righteous gospel.

Be pretty in pink as you love your way Sunday night with post-punk/new wave icons The Psychedelic Furs.

Over the weekend, fall in love with Brazil’s powerful Afro-diasporic poet, composer and multi-instrumentalist Bia Ferreira. Pull your bell bottoms outta your closet and groove to The Free Label’s funky disco/R&B fusion. Witness the power of song as Mary Gauthier brilliantly documents our world. Become immersed in YAGODY’s theatrical, dramatically intense Ukrainian ancestral songs.

Come as you are: in boots, heels, birks or barefoot! Take advantage of our flash sale from Thursday March 12 at 10:00 am until Monday March 16 at 11:59 pm MT by purchasing individual day tickets or weekend passes here or by calling 403-233-0904.

Get your tickets here!

Bia Ferreira

Brazil

You may not understand Ferreira’s words unless you speak Portuguese, but you will understand the music; whether it features acute rat-a-tat rap, or channels an underground lounge where luscious ballads caress folks pondering love and politics, Bia Ferreira’s music jolts and delights.

Her journey covers piano lessons at age 3, singing in a church choir and multi-instrumental conservatory studies to her journey as a Black woman whose first song, written when she was 12, asked God to not make her a lesbian, and by hitchhiking as a young adult, busking and learning to play guitar one-handed to attract more onlookers.

While she claims her music is made to create discomfort with the status quo, recent songs highlight tenderness as a revolutionary tool. Beware, for these clandestine melodies wrapped around not so secretive messages have also been known to create euphoria.

- Mary-Lynn Wardle

Bia performs on Saturday and Sunday, July 25 & 26


See Bia Live!

The Free Label

Toronto, ON

Welcome to the groove portion of your festival weekend. If these six former college pals from Toronto happen to be gracing the stage you’re at, then you, my friends, are at the Party Stage. Since 2017, The Free Label have gotten even the most reluctant booties up and shakin’, with their fusion of disco, R&B and funk. With apologies to a famed Saturday Night Live skit, it’s like when you’ve got a fever — and the only cure is more keytar. That handheld synthesizer vibes along with throbbing bass, tight jazzy drums, good-god-y’all guitar, a second keyboardist and lead vocalist John Tkakas taking control of the soul. They may throw in a Stevie Wonder cover, or even Alice in Chains, but there’s only one certainty during a Free Label set: You. Will. Dance.

- Jason Markusoff

The Free Label perform live on Saturday & Sunday, July 25th and 26th.

See The Free Label Live!

Goldie Boutilier

Nova Scotia, Canada

Having traversed a long and winding path to her current acclaim, Goldie Boutilier weaves vivid, unflinching narratives of the sordid daybreak aftermath that follows the surface level glamour of high society nightlife, set to an electrifying current of high energy disco grooves. The result is danceable pop songs with sugary hooks with gravitas and depth of feeling.

Earlier work leaned into forward thinking country rock, with '60s pop elements scattered throughout, while hinting at a future sonic direction.

On her latest debut LP Goldie Boutilier Presents Goldie Montana, Boutilier's raw, fearless lyrics paint abstracts of the ennui that follows hedonism. With sultry, danceable grooves lending theatricality and anthemic drama to tender moments of intense vulnerability, she’s both an ingenue and femme fatale, bridging the gulf between starlet and troubadour.

- Mike Dunn

Goldie performs on Friday July 24, 2026


See Goldie Live!

Marty Stuart & his Fabulous Superlatives

Nashville, TN

Seeing and hearing Marty Stuart is akin to visiting a section of the Country Music Hall of Fame with only the greatest artifacts. Stuart preaches the gospel of bluegrass to Bakersfield. This rebel traditionalist pushes the envelope, but never loses sight of the rich cultural mix that surrounded him as an instrumental prodigy growing up in the South.

His band, The Fabulous Superlatives, are both fabulous and worthy of a scattershot round of the best superlatives. On guitar, “Cousin” Kenny Vaughn has recorded and toured with many of the best country (“alt” and otherwise) music artists of the last 40 years. “Handsome” Harry Stinson has laid down the backbeat and the tenor background vocals on Nashville hits from the 1980s on. Chris Scruggs’s Grandpa is Earl, with enviable credits of his own. Sharp looks. Sharp licks. Sharp patter. Sharp as a tack! These fellows have seen everything and can do anything, so magically rip through rockabilly and surf-rock rave ups, swing country classics and lay down righteous gospel.

- Jay Nelson

Marty performs live with his band on Saturday, July 25th, 2026.


See Marty Live

Mary Gauthier

New Orleans, US

One of North America’s most admired and influential singer-songwriters, Gauthier’s early songs drew on experiences of adoption, addiction and recovery plus the challenge of growing up gay in Louisiana. She puts her empathy to good use as she “ writes what I see in the world right now”, including embracing the stories of many marginalized people, for instance her Grammy-nominated collection of songs co-written with wounded Iraq war veterans. Chronicling her unorthodox career transition from the culinary arts to music in her 2021 book Saved by a Song, she describes making the leap from chef to tunesmith, overcoming crippling stage fright superseded by her passion for songwriting. Gauthier’s powerful songs attracted attention throughout the folk and Americana communities, resulting in covers by musical luminaries. Eleven albums later, Gauthier’s intense, heartfelt commitment to her vocation remains unabated. She explains, “Writing songs helps me sort out confusion, untangle powerful emotions, and ward off desperation. It helps me navigate the powerful emotional weather systems of life.”

- Eric Rosenbaum

Mary performs on Saturday & Sunday, July 25th & 26th, 2026


See Mary Live!

The Psychedelic Furs

UK

The Psychedelic Furs were born in 1977, powered by vocalist Richard Butler and his bass player brother Tim, who together remain the heart of the band. Throughout the ‘80s they combined punk and new wave sounds with a strong pop sensibility and sense of unabashed romanticism in timeless songs that go well beyond their most famous soundtrack hit “Pretty in Pink.” The band fizzled out in the early 1990s just as a new generation of post-punk songwriters raised on The Furs took alternative rock into the mainstream.

But a band this great can’t stay down for long and in 2000 the Butlers brought the Furs back as a touring act. In 2020 they released Made of Rain, their first LP in almost 30 years. The new songs are just as electric, jagged, cinematic and unmistakably Psychedelic Furs as anything the band has recorded; a testament to the power of swagger, poetry, big guitar hooks, and an effortless cool that doesn’t seem to age.

- Elizabeth Chorney-Booth

The Psychedelic Furs are performing live on Sunday, July 26, 2026.

See The Psychedelic Furs Live!

Valerie June

USA

June’s music bursts with effervescent jubilation, grounded with a strong, soulful reverence for the wonders of the world around her. Infectious optimism is central to June’s performances but her catalogue also carries a complexity and vulnerability, casting beguiling shadows over her brighter compositions. Weaving together elements of blues, traditional Appalachian folk, country, bluegrass, and rock, June’s sound sits in a space that is both charmingly old-timey and refreshingly modern, as channeled through her guitar and banjo playing. June’s greatest gift is her distinctive voice: with a touch of Tennessee twang, her vocals range from dreamy highs to lower earthier tones, reflecting the waxing and waning of her songs. With lyrics ringing with wide-eyed, often spiritual poetry and a superstar-level stage presence, it’s no wonder that June has earned herself a Grammy nomination and the praise of none other than Bob Dylan.

-Elizabeth Chorney-Booth

Valerie will be performing live on Thursday, July 23, 2026.

See Valerie Live!

YAGODY

Ukraine

The dramatic intensity of YAGODY’s folk music owes partly to this female vocal quartet’s members being colleagues from a Lviv theatre school. But the rest of that dramatic heft they give their music stems from the hard reality that’s befallen their country during four years of Russian war and brutality that revives, celebrates and shares Ukrainian traditional song, but also wields its very existence as cultural identity.

Accordion, drums, guitar and tsymbaly (dulcimer) drive this ensemble’s music, but the four vocalists lift it skyward. While they mostly explore traditional music – “the songs of wild tribes, the voice of your ancestors” their original song “Tsunamia” was Ukraine’s powerful entry to the 2024 Eurovision song contest. Like much of what they do, it was a crashing wave that hit hard, urgent and proud. There are few more powerful and beautiful ways to proclaim Slava Ukraini! than theirs.

- Jason Markusoff

Yagody will be performing live on Saturday & Sunday, July 25 & 26, 2026.

See YAGODY Live!