Hayley Kiyoko Is Headlining The Dinah: “This Moment Has Been a Long Time Coming”
The Palm Springs festival runs September 30 to October 4, with Da Brat, The Aces and Sasha Keable also on the bill — the first edition since it changed hands from its founder.
The Dinah has its 2026 headliner.
Hayley Kiyoko will top the bill at this year's festival in Palm Springs, organizers confirmed in an exclusive announcement to Them. “This moment has been a long time coming!” Kiyoko said. “The Dinah has always been such a special place for our community, and I can't think of a better way to keep the Girls Like Girls celebration going this year. See you all in Palm Springs!”
She arrives off a busy summer promoting Girls Like Girls, her coming-of-age film built out from the 2015 single and video that made her name.
“We are so thrilled to welcome Hayley Kiyoko to The Dinah,” co-owners Bella Barkow and Rose Garcia said in a press release. “Hayley performing at the festival has been a dream of ours and we've long admired her passion and artistry.”
What The Dinah actually is
If you've only ever heard it referenced in passing: The Dinah was established in 1991 and has run in Palm Springs for decades as a weekend built for queer women, and it reached a much wider audience after being prominently featured in a first-season episode of The L Word. ABC7 calls it “the world’s longest-running music festival for queer women”; the festival's own framing is female and non-binary.
It also changed hands earlier this year. Barkow and Garcia acquired it from founder and former owner Mariah Hanson, as The Advocate reported, and have said they want to expand the festival's inclusivity — it has grown steadily more trans-inclusive across its run.
Kiyoko is not the whole lineup. Da Brat was announced first, a couple of weeks before this, and the bill also carries The Aces plus the R&B singer Sasha Keable.
If you're anywhere near Palm Springs that week
The festival runs Wednesday September 30 through Sunday October 4, and its own site sells hotel rooms and packages alongside tickets. Our full guide to The Dinah 2026 has the party-by-party schedule, which hotel hosts what, and where to stay if the festival rooms sell out.
This next part is us talking, not the organizers: if you were loosely eyeing Palm Springs for early October, it's worth deciding sooner rather than later, or shifting a week either side. Early October is also when the desert stops being punishing, which is its own reason to go.
The rest of town carries on regardless. Our Palm Springs listings cover the bars, resorts and restaurants worth knowing about whenever you land.
Thirty-five years is a long time for anything in this community to last, and The Dinah has just passed from its founder to new owners for the first time. Whoever it's built for, that's worth marking.
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