As Summer Moves Forward, The Riot Fest Picture Becomes...Like 2 Bands Clearer

The last couple weeks have been an absolute flood of tour and festival announcements. It's not surprising. There are just so many dollars to go around each summer for the average concertgoer (I lie to myself again), and you can't risk another big tour upstaging your announcement and nabbing those limited funds before you.

And so while Riot Fest hasn't made a whole lot of noise about their lineup, certain holes in the schedules of announced tours and sometimes leaked information posted accidentally on socials can sometimes 'soft lock' bands into the fest.

Let's take a look at what all is going on with Riot Fest 2024 so far:

WHAT WE KNOW FOR SURE:

Regular readers of the site (both of you) will remember that we basically have Sum 41 locked in for Riot Fest for their final Chicago show ever. But we've since had our first official announcement from RF themselves, announcing that Slayer (aka SLAYYYERRRRRRRRRRR!!!!!!!!!!) will be playing one of the three days of the fest.

WHAT WE BASICALLY KNOW BUT EVERYONE IS PRETENDING NOT TO TALK ABOUT UNTIL IT'S 'OFFICIALLY' TIME:

Like...come on. No line for a tour goes CLE > DET > Rockford. I highly doubt that Something Corporate completely skip the Chicago market completely on this tour and the date lines up perfectly. If SoCo isn't at Riot Fest (both the band and the liquor that ticket holders in their 20's are going to sneak into the fest in a sock flask and drink warm)...well, I'll drink an entire sock flask full of warm SoCo.

Also, it's kinda suspicious that NOFX's farewell tour does not have a Chicago date either. Pencil them in as well.

WHAT IS STILL BASELESS SPECULATION:

Pretty much...everything? Not gonna lie, Riot Fest has really been able to keep a lid on this lineup pretty well, even with all the context clues we usually get this time of year. There are some big names on tour that could potentially headline that either hit Chicago last summer with their current tours (Fall Out Boy, Flaming Lips, Offspring) or are playing Chicago already in 2024 but outside of the 90 day window of RF (Bleachers). So everything is up in the air.

My personal opinion? Let Gogol Bordello play for 10 hours each day.