“Has There Been A Rebrand?” – Country Music Fans Slam Extra Innings Festival’s Lineup Featuring Luke Bryan, Shaboozey, Jessie Murph & More

Since its inaugural year in 2018, Extra Innings Festival has been consistently one of the most unique music experiences in the country. In partnership with the MLB, C3 Presents, the producers of Lollapalooza, Austin City Limits, Two Step Inn and more, have called upon a wide array of artists and former ball players to appear at the festival.

Interestingly, there have been different variations of Extra Innings Festival in the past few years. First beginning as an undeniably rock-based festival from 2018 to 2023, starting in 2024, they began to pivot into a mix between both rock and country and eventually split the festival into two separate events.

Notably, this year, there were once again two separate forms of the event with one focusing on country and folk and the other focusing on rock in back-to-back weekends. With the country/folk one featuring the likes of The Lumineers, Kacey Musgraves, Kings of Leon, The Red Clay Strays, Megan Moroney, Wyatt Flores, Sam Barber and more, the rock-centric festival booked heavy hitters such as The Killers, Fall Out Boy, Beck, The All American Rejects, Gary Clark Jr. among others.

This year’s festivals proved be another success that continued Extra Innings’ streak of booking quality headliners after securing names like Chris Stapleton, Dave Matthews Band, Noah Kahan, The Red Hot Chili Peppers, Hozier, Green Day and more across the different iterations.

Yesterday, Extra Innings announced their 2026 of country/folk acts… and it’s a far departure from previous years.

Though there are plenty of great supporting acts such as Colby Acuff, Noeline Hofmann, 49 Winchester, Muscadine Bloodline and Cole Phillips, Extra Innings took a hard pivot towards mainstream country and booked Luke Bryan, Dierks Bentley, Kane Brown and HARDY as the four headliners across the festival’s two days on February 27th and 28th.

Beyond the group of headliners, Shaboozey, Jessie Murph and Bret Michaels (who knew he was still around?) are also scheduled to perform in what can only be described as one of the steepest festival lineup departures since Buckeye Country Superfest went from Zach Bryan, Turnpike Troubadours, Billy Strings and more in 2024 to Jelly Roll, Kane Brown, Dasha and more in 2025.

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After receiving the likes of non-mainstream country superstars such as Charley Crockett, Turnpike Troubadours, Ryan Bingham, Shane Smith & the Saints, Morgan Wade and all the previous names mentioned over the past three years, fans of the festival were quick to call out Extra Innings for the abundance of mainstream country.

With comments calling the lineup embarrassing and quick to note the aforementioned headliners from years past, some even questioned if the festival went through a rebrand:

“You put out a great lineup of authentic and really solid artists last year and this year decide to roll out the corporate Nashville slop machine. Absolutely embarrassing. (49, Acuff, Hoffman, Muscadine notwithstanding)”

“This is way more mainstream country than the past years? Has there been a rebrand? There’s plenty of country festivals out there, I liked extra innings because it had more folk.”

“Raising the prices and getting lesser known headliners is a really bad look. Pricing out locals who go every year and the product is objectively worse.”

We went from Charley, Stapleton, Kaitlin, Bingham, Turnpike, Sheryl Crow, Gin Blossoms, Jade Bird, Dave Matthews Band, et. al, in 2024… to this.”

“Lumineers and Kings of Leon were legendary. What’s this lol.”

“Horrible lineup. What happened to Stapleton and DMB?”

“WHAT A FLOP…”

“Eww nah”

“Going 1/4 on headliners is wild”

“Absolutely not”

“Dierks I love you. 49 I love you, but my god this is a**”

Feeling extremely reminiscent of the aforementioned Buckeye Country Superfest debacle this year, it looks like Extra Innings has a lot of goodwill to gain back from fans after rolling out a lineup like this one. Though there’s some undeniable talent present with the likes of Bentley, Acuff, Hofmann, 49 Winchester and Muscadine Bloodline, there’s too many head-scratchers here to even compare it to previous iterations of the festival.

You can definitely call this one a misstep.The post “Has There Been A Rebrand?” – Country Music Fans Slam Extra Innings Festival’s Lineup Featuring Luke Bryan, Shaboozey, Jessie Murph & More first appeared on Whiskey Riff.