Charli XCX brought all her charisma, chaos, and club kid energy to her set at Coachella 2025, lighting up the main stage during Saturday night’s festivities on April 12, 2025. While BRAT summer has long since ended (or has it?), the set proved that the attention-grabbing album still has plenty of runway; the Grammy winner played a number of cuts from the LP, while also welcoming a trio of special guests.
Her “Sweat Tour” collaborator Troye Sivan popped in for “Talk Talk”; Lorde made a surprise cameo to join Charli for the “Girl, So Confusing” remix; and Billie Eilish appeared for the live debut of the “Guess” remix. Elsewhere in the set, Charli performed songs including “Von Dutch,” “Apple,” “Sympathy is a knife,” “365,” and “Track 10.” She closed the show with “I Love It,” before displaying a video message suggesting that BRAT summer may not be over after all: “Thank you so much Coachella. Does this mean that Brat Summer is finally over????? idk? Maybe? yes cuz duh it was already over like last year. wait…was it? NO??? i don’t know who i am if it’s over??? FUCKKKKKKKK wait…i remembered…i’m charli. and honestly i just want moment to last forever. Please don’t let it be over.”
Charli XCX’s Coachella performance arrives ahead of a string of additional 2025 festival appearances, including Glastonbury, LIDO Festival in London, and Parklife in Manchester. She’ll also spend the rest of the spring on the road with the “BRAT 2025 Arena Tour,” which features stops in Austin, Minneapolis, Rosemont, and Brooklyn. Her “Sweat” tour with Troye Sivan was one of the best live shows of last year, so get tickets for her upcoming tour here to keep the party going.
Ever the busy woman, Charli is also stepping into a chapter filled with acting gigs, including a new A24 film titled The Moment. Until her big-screen moment officially arrives, learn how to grab last-minute tickets to Coachella here, and see why we named BRATour favorite album of 2024.
Charli XCX brought her “Brat” tour to Coachella along with many of the guests she’s had on the album (and onstage) in the ten months since she launched the album: Billie Eilish, Lorde, and Troye Sivan — and in an uncharacteristically sentimental typed montage on the giant video screens at the show’s end, she teased that even though summer is long since over, she never wants “Brat Summer” to end.
The veteran singer-songwriter-producer dropped a coy hint in the days before the festival, using the road-to-Coachella-billboard tradition to tease the appearance by taking out a billboard in the trademark bilious shade of light green featured on the Grammy-winning “Brat” album cover, but with the word crossed out. It set off the expected flurry of social-media speculation, none of it conclusive. (Far more obvious was Eilish’s Instagram story yesterday: a blank slate of “Brat” green.)
Charli’s performance was strong but basically the same set she’s been touring since her joint “Sweat” tour with Sivan last fall, albeit with not only him (for “Talk Talk”) but also a khaki-clad Lorde (who’d also joined her onstage in New York in September for “Girl, So Confusing”) and Eilish (for the remix of “Guess”). As usual, however, Charli was onstage solo for most of the night, bodying the songs with her trademark unusually violent dancing: hard fist pumps and hair-whipping, torso wrenching, and writhing on the stage floor.
Popular on Variety Every song except three were from the album: She also served up 2017’s “Unlock It,” 2019’s “Blame It on Your Love” and finished with the song that launched her career as a hitmaker, “I Love It,” the Icona Pop global hit that she wrote and co-produced. And just as it seemed the show was over, words began appearing in a slow sequence, in her familiar style and typefaces, on the giant screens on either side of the stage as she stood and basked in the applause. “Thank you so much Coachella,” they began. “Does this mean that brat summer is finally over????? … Idk? … Maybe? … yeah cuz duh it was already over like last year. … wait… was it? … NO???… I don’t know who I am if it’s over??? FUCKKKKK…. Wait… I remembered…I’m Charli XCX… and honestly… I just want this moment to last forever… PLEASE DON’T LET IT BE OVER.”
And with that, the lights went down. Realistically, “Brat Summer” was likely to last at least until the fall, as she’s got a brace of U.S. area dates following Coachella, and then will be performing at European festivals all summer.
To many, the world of Charli XCX consists of lime green, high-profile collaborations, and hard drugs. But the British pop star’s Coachella performance reminds us, she’s much more. Before she took the stage, murmurs took over the green-clad crowd. Could Billie Eilish make an appearance? What about Troye Sivan? No, it has to be Addison Rae. In her all-black attire, the singer appears on the Coachella main stage, causing the crowd to roar. Behind her blacked-out glasses, she sets the tone, exclaiming, “What the f—?” Luckily, the whispers were correct—XCX peppered her performance with predictable experiences.
Sweat tour co-headliner and “Rush” singer Troye Sivan kicked off the star-studded lineup to perform their “Talk Talk” remix, then came alternative empress Lorde for “Girl, So Confusing,” and Billie Eilish completed the holy trinity by performing “Guess.” But beyond her A-list associations, XCX delivered a mostly “brat” setlist. She patrolled the stage with an undeniable sense of confidence—making her way down to the barricade and strutting up and down the lengthy catwalk, red solo cup in hand.
Charli XCX has been a member of the pop scene for over a decade. As the vocalist on Icona Pop’s “I Love it” and Iggy Azalea’s “Fancy,” the singer spent her early career edging a mainstream breakthrough and building a fiercely loyal fanbase. It wasn’t until “brat,” her fifth studio album, that her poignant lyricism and experimental sonics began to click with the general population. The June release became more than a charting record, but rather a cultural movement — creating what has been coined as “brat summer.” Encouraging people to embrace a party lifestyle and let loose, XCX has spent the past year at the helm of a party girl revival. Her last offering was the 2012 Icona Pop collaboration, “I Love it.”
The memorable, throwback synths filled the Coachella air. It was a full-circle moment – as an old video of XCX comes to mind. It’s one where she was performing the same track, in 2014 at a German music festival. The young XCX gets frustrated with the silent crowd and yells, “Do you know the f—ing words?” Now, they do. In the middle of the dense crowd, you can barely hear XCX’s vocals over the crowd’s thunderous vocals, singing “I don’t care / I love it” over and over again. The usually stone-faced singer lets a smile shine through. Oh, how things have changed.
She’s gone in a flash but leaves the audience with a message. Written on the large screens, she acknowledges the end of brat summer and questions, “Idk who I am when it’s over.” It only takes a few seconds for her to leave us with the reminder—“I’m Charli.” But she shouldn’t sweat it —we won’t be forgetting that anytime soon.
