How Singapore’s F1 Grand Prix Became The ‘Coachella of Asia’

SINGAPORE — With its combination of speed, glamor, artistry and science, Formula 1 is a spectacle that travels at a speed and sound nothing else can match.

It was Red Bull’s Max Verstappen who bagged the 2026 Formula 1 Singapore Airlines Singapore Grand Prix earlier this month with a pole-to-checkered flag win, an historic deed for the flying Dutchman who finally conquered a race that had eluded him for a decade.

If Verstappen was the king of the track, The Killers, Janet Jackson, Split Enz, JJ Lin and Lana Del Rey were the stars of the live show, a music festival that pumps away when the racing pauses.

With its flashy street circuit and three-day live music festival, the Singapore GP has a speed and sound quite unlike any other race on the calendar. Established in 2008, senior music industry executives are now calling it the premier annual music festival in Asia.

Billboard was there to catch the action Oct. 9-11, both on track and across the event’s 11 live entertainment stages.

Coachella of Asia

Concert promoters pray for sunshine. The team behind the Singapore GP’s music festival did just that, and their prayers were mostly answered.

Slippery conditions for a Formula One Grand Prix aren’t just a bummer, they can be downright dangerous. When these rockets on wheels fly around bends and top speeds of 230 mph on the straight, grip is paramount.

Neil Finn performed with Crowded House at the Singapore F1 GP last year, and returned this time with the reunited art-rock legends Split Enz. Finn always brings the weather with him, not a talent that’s ideal for these circumstances. So, for the Enz’ opening night set at the Wharf stage, in Zone 1, the New Zealand songsmith sent out a message of good luck “to all the drivers and all the teams. Let’s hope they go real fast. And stay real safe.”

Singapore in October is hot and humid, even through the evening. And this year, hazy, thanks to a bushfire crisis in neighboring Indonesia. Gloomy reports from the BBC on the eve of showtime warned that due to poor visibility and air quality, restrictions might be placed on the entertainment.

Promoting live entertainment, there’s never a dull moment.

Mother Nature didn’t go and spoil the fun. Rain fell prior to the Sprint Race, Saturday, Oct. 10, which meant for some adjustment to the start times of the following stage lineup, but the event and entertainment proceeded as planned, organizers say.

The weekend action occupies downtown Singapore and is within walking distance of roughly 25,000 hotel beds. It’s partly for this reason that international visitors account for half the GP’s 100,000-person daily attendance.

There’s no doubt that the sport of F1 is the main drawcard. But in Singapore, the music program is no passenger. “Singapore GP has become one of the most significant events in the region, often referred to internally at WME as the ‘Coachella of Asia,’” explains Brett Murrihy, head of Asia Pacific & partner agent, William Morris Endeavour (WME).

This year, WME brought as many as 12 clients to what is essentially an entertainment festival, with F1 as the headline act. When the driving stops, multiple stages around the circuit rev up. “No other festival in Asia possesses comparable buying power or influence,” Murrihy continues.  

The Formula 1 Singapore Airlines Singapore Grand Prix 2026 welcomed 301,294 spectators, including Kim Kardashian, who was there to support her boyfriend, Ferrari driver Lewis Hamilton. That was the second-highest attendance in the event’s history, and the highest since the Marina Bay Street Circuit layout was revised in 2023, pipped only by the event in 2022, when 302,000 spectators filed through the gates.

This year, the Singapore GP team booked and curated a lineup of 43 acts. That’s after the 2025 edition that featured performances from Elton John, Foo Fighters, Lewis Capaldi, The Smashing Pumpkins, Alan Walker, G-Dragon and more.

“While Formula 1 is the star of the show, we’ve always seen the event as more than a race and the concerts ensure that our race fans are entertained when F1 is not on-track,” explains Adam Firth, executive director, Singapore GP, an Australian expat who has called Singapore home for more than 10 years. “We want our crowds to have a total entertainment experience and feel they have received value for money.”

Firth’s team works throughout the year to identify artists and acts that “we believe will resonate with our fans” and complement the atmosphere and the diverse crowd. “We try to create a diverse lineup, one that appeals to a teenage Singaporean girl but also might appeal to a general middle-aged motorsport fan visiting from Europe,” he says.

Right on Track

What played out this time was a lineup that included regional stars CORTIS and JJ Lin, veteran U.S. rockers The Killers and Goo Goo Dolls, R&B super Janet Jackson, rising stars Zara Larsson and James Arthur, DJ sets, a slew of Australasian acts, and a closing headline spot by Lana Del Rey.

For the first time, organizers floated the Barge stage, which hosted back-to-back sets from the likes of DJ Snake, Major Lazer Soundsystem, TOKiMONSTA, Rev Run, Flight Facilities, Mark Ronson and ZHU. The cars aren’t the only assets that are tinkered with in the off-season.

“This has been my favorite F1,” Ronson told the crowd as he finished his set with the double punch of Amy Winehouse’s cover of “Valerie” and Bruno Mars’ “Uptown Funk.” “Everyone says this is the best F1, it really is.”

Del Rey drew a massive crowd for her own set at the Padang Stage, the largest of the spaces with an audience of 60,000, with the U.S. singer and songwriter delivering her first major concert in this city-state. And she gave long-suffering fans a treat, with the live debut of new music — and the hint of a return.

Lana, The Killers and other major international acts “have leveraged the festival as their exclusive engagement in the market, reinforcing its strategic importance as a premier live music platform,” Murrihy says. “This exclusivity has not only driven significant consumer demand locally but has also helped build audience momentum and strengthen fan engagement across the broader Asian region, amplifying the festival’s influence and commercial impact beyond a single market.”

The touring landscape across Asia has expanded significantly over the past decade, explains Murrihy, who joined WME in 2015 when the talent and media agency acquired Artist Voice, which he co-founded with Matt Gudinski, now CEO of Mushroom Group. Major international artists, from Bruno Mars, Dua Lipa, Coldplay, The Weeknd and Olivia Rodrigo now regularly incorporate the region into their touring schedules, with many performing multiple region and stadium dates. It was at Singapore’s National Stadium where, in March 2024, Taylor Swift played six shows, her only dates in the region.

This year’s Singapore GP took off, despite competing directly with Austin City Limits Music Festival’s 25th anniversary in Texas, a sprawling, two-weekend music extravaganza whose performers, insiders say, can fill about 30 U.S. dates around that festival.

“Asia has become an essential and highly valuable market within the global live entertainment ecosystem, both commercially and strategically,” Murrihy continues, nothing that Indonesia, India and Philippines have emerged as “particularly important growth territories.” It’s an “exceptionally dynamic and exciting period for the live music industry in Asia.”

A Whole of Government Approach

Without support from the Singapore government, there’s no show. “It’s critical to this event,” Firth explained during a keynote for All That Matters 2026 at the Hilton Singapore Orchard, a multi-stream conference that raises the curtain on the GP. “There’s almost no agency that doesn’t touch the event” in the nine months that goes into building and tearing down the circuit, including police, transport, environment and customs.

In 2022, when rain delayed the race, a conversation with the government minister at 9pm on a Sunday night enabled organizers to extend the trains by more than an additional hour to about 1:30am, so that the event could proceed without shortening entertainment. “It’s really a whole of government approach to the event,” Firth admits.

Coachella doesn’t have an F1 race, but its live stream keeps music fans glued to their devices. “It’s definitely something I’ve been thinking about,” Firth says of a streaming element. One of the issues is “we are, first and foremost, a Formula 1 race. Formula 1 has the TV rights, so that would need to be part of the discussions, alongside discussions with artists. Currently a key aim is to bring visitors to Singapore, so we prioritize building in-circuit audience. Streaming has been a strong brand-building tool for other major festivals.”

After a pause for some much-needed downtime, the team will get cracking on its wishlist for next year’s show. “Obviously, you hope that everyone is safe and has a good time,” Firth says. “There are so many things outside your powers, you just hope to run an event that’s good enough to meet fan expectations and better than the one you did last time.”