There’s a well-known saying in leadership circles that “feedback is a gift.” At the Walnut Valley Festival, we’ve found that to be true year after year. Every September, you tell us what moved you, what surprised you, and what you hope to see next time—and we take that to heart. Your survey responses help shape our performer lineup, fine-tune our programming, and honor the traditions that make Winfield what it is.

This year’s feedback made one thing clear: you loved the 2025 performer lineup. And as we put the finishing touches on hiring for 2026, we’ve kept your voices front and center. Your feedback has guided our choices once again, and we’re excited to share the full lineup announcement with you soon as we continue building a festival shaped by the people who love it most.

Our hiring is a group effort, taking advantage of the expertise of both staff members and people outside the organization. We are helped by the fact that 1) agents and performers know us and want to perform at Winfield and 2) artists often fall in love with our crowd and want to return.

Each year’s lineup grows out of a wide mix of possibilities—new faces we’re excited to introduce, and past performers who continue to resonate with our community. As always, artist selection depends on schedules, fees, and the overall balance of the festival, but we love having the chance to consider a broad range of musicians as we shape the program. There are many types of music festivals, but people generally categorize them based on whether they bring in new bands each year, or hire solid artists that their crowd knows and loves. We do both. We also hire several bands each year that are from the area – many of whom have earned a following through our campground stages. These are key elements in our approach to hiring performers, and it has been that way for several years now.

Of course, Walnut Valley Festival has many things to offer, aside from phenomenal sets on our main stages. In 2025 we had some of the best pickers in the world compete at our 8 instrument championships. Acoustic Music Shoppe, a streamed variety show held in between contests at Stage IV, again filmed ALL the contest finals, and you can find links to those in our digital Occasional. We want to thank the Chapman Brothers and their crew for building a great program for our festival-goers and for bringing the Walnut Valley Festival to viewers around the world.

Our juried arts and crafts fair also received high marks in surveys this year, as did our selection of food vendors. We had a record number of participants in our Feisty Music Camp for Kids, and Andy May’s Acoustic Kids provided on-stage showcases for some very talented young players. We want to thank Elexa Dawson and Sally Vee for hosting our first Youth Songwriters Workshop, as well as Stage 7 for hosting the Saturday morning workshop. And of course we appreciate Chris Jones and his team of reviewers for making our NewSong Showcase a success, and we congratulate Emily Erday-Johnson, winner of our inaugural Master Songsmith award in 2025.

If you are one of those who take advantage of our early bird pricing you may have already noticed a few things different at our office. This year we are teaming up with Ticketspice to offer lower fees to our patrons. You might want to consider their event insurance as well, in case some unforeseen event does not allow you to attend next year’s festival. But get the early bird tickets soon, because we only offer them through February 15.

You will not see it for a while, but we intend to change our stage schedules slightly by adding short breaks in between our sets in 2026. While the festival’s “transition on the fly” is a tradition at Winfield, performers, sound crew and fans have asked that we incorporate these breaks to help ensure every band can deliver a full, high-quality set. We have been putting together an amazing lineup of performers for our 54th festival, some of whom are featured in this digital newsletter. Aside from the official stages with hours of talented picking, we will have eight instrument championships, a juried arts and crafts fair, and some great food vendors. You can expect all this and more in 2026!

Bart Redford
Executive Director