Ms. Lauryn Hill, Hot Tuna, Hayley Williams, and more kick off the 2026 Newport Folk Festival

NEWPORT, R.I. — Day one of this year’s Newport Folk Festival played out like a tribute to the game that took over our American consciousness in the World Cup summer of 2026. There was plenty of give-and-go between teammates, and performers who controlled the pace of play. Most of the headliners had scoring opportunities, and several role players were awarded free kicks.

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In the end, though, you might say the day ended in a draw.

Through the years Newport has earned the trust of its avid supporters, typically selling out all three days even before the lineup is announced. On Friday, the whole was greater than the sum of its parts.

Australia’s Courtney Barnett, indie darling Lucy Dacus, and Paramore’s Hayley Williams brought their own distinct variations of what constitutes “folk” music to the main stage at picturesque Fort Adams State Park, overlooking Newport Harbor and Narragansett Bay.

Newcomer Brother Wallace and the Rhode Island natives Deer Tick highlighted the Quad Stage inside the compound walls. Hot Tuna, the psychedelic-era blues band led by the hale 80-somethings Jorma Kaukonen and Jack Casady, played Newport for the first time.

That set, on the mid-size Harbor Stage, was introduced by Jay Sweet, the festival’s executive producer. He apologized for only recently realizing the omission, before the group wryly opened with the traditional “Hesitation Blues”: “How long do I have to wait?”

That was the question on the minds of many (including fans Dacus and Brandi Carlile, who gathered at side stage) for Ms. Lauryn Hill’s late-afternoon acoustic set. Scheduled for an hour, the former Fugee let a DJ entertain the crowd for half that time before she materialized to play a brief set of songs from her 2002 album “MTV Unplugged No. 2.0” (“Mr. Intentional,” “Adam Lives in Theory”). There was no referee on hand to add stoppage time.

Earlier in the day, Berklee products Tiny Habits paid homage to their former stamping grounds on “hemenway,” the Boston street where “we had a lot of heartache.” Birmingham’s Taylor Hollingsworth warmed up the lawn-chair crowd with a showcase set that concluded with his wife and daughter joining on the International Songwriting Competition award-winning song “Ring of Saturn.”

Throughout the grounds folk fans wore their allegiances on their sleeves, or more accurately, emblazoned across their T-shirts. “Live Fast Neil Young,” read one. Another:“Everything I Learned I Learned from John Prine.”

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On the Harbor Stage Robbie Cunningham, lead singer of the Irish folk band Amble, introduced a cover of Prine’s “Angel from Montgomery” by noting that the late songwriter is his “all-time favorite.” A Newport festival day is always good for a few cover songs that underscore the folk music continuum; during Dacus’s set, she invited the Killers’ Brandon Flowers (who has embarked upon a country-leaning side project) to sit beside her on a cast-iron settee for a haunting duet on Jim Croce’s “Time in a Bottle.”

“Y’all are gonna have to pinch me,” Dacus said afterward.

Speaking of covers, the actor Michael Shannon, indie rock guitarist Jason Narducy, and Wilco bassist John Stirratt brought their R.E.M. tribute band to the Quad Stage. Focusing on the legendary group’s first several albums, they ended their set with “Just a Touch,” the rave-up that was one of thefirst songs the band wrote together, and “These Days,” with its signature line: “We are hope despite the times.”

A few minutes later, Wednesday’s Karly Hartzman punctuated her band’s guitar-heavy set with a series of primal screams.

Along the midway, the folks staffing the booth for the voter registration group HeadCount put out a small whiteboard with two columns encouraging fans to “choose your Haley.” One was Haley Heynderickx, the Oregonian songwriter who delivered a lovely set on the Harbor Stage with Max García Conover anchored in their recent album “What of Our Nature,” which was recorded “in the spirit of” Woody Guthrie.

The other made her Folk Fest debut last year as a guest during Jack Antonoff’s Bleachers appearance. For her official Newport debut (billed as Hayley Williams & Friends), she peppered her set with guest appearances, including Dacus, Joy Oladokun, Remi Wolf, and Antonoff (“I Wanna Get Better”).

“Damn, this is fun,” Williams blurted at one point. “Are you overstimulated?” The Mississippi native’s set featured her 2025 solo song “True Believer,” which is critical of the South of her upbringing. She ended on the funky “Good Ol’ Days,” a celebration of forbidden love, followed by a group singalong, as most days of the Folk Festival tend to conclude.

Williams’s choice was Bill Withers’s “Lean on Me.” It is, of course, a lovely song, but in this context it felt a little bit like a soccer anthem.

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NEWPORT FOLK FESTIVAL

At Fort Adams State Park, Newport, R.I., Friday

James Sullivan can be reached at [email protected].