Hot Tuna Join Newport Folk Festival 2026 Lineup
Hot Tuna, photo by Dino Perrucci
Hot Tuna have signed on to perform at the 67th annual Newport Folk Festival. On Friday, July 24, the blues-rock duo of former Jefferson Airplane bandmates Jorma Kaukonen and Jack Casady will take the stage at Newport, R.I.’s Fort Adams State Park for their first-ever set at the storied American roots music summit.
Hot Tuna’s Newport booking lands in a time of transition for the nearly six-decade project. In 2023, the duo concluded their final Electric Hot Tuna tour, shifting their priorities to intimate acoustic renderings of their catalog and the broader blues songbook. Last October, Kaukonen announced that he was entering the “cresting wave” of his live career, stepping away from full-scale touring without ceasing other scattered engagements.
“It’s a work in progress because we’re still pulling into the end of the old way of touring—we’ve got one more with the old way of touring this April,” Kaukonen explained in a recent Relix cover feature. “But the bottom line here is that I’m not retiring in the sense that most people think about that. I need to keep playing gigs in order to keep up my guitar playing, my singing and all the stuff that goes along with that, especially at the level where I like things to be… Time is marching on. But, in my humble opinion—and I’m not writing an editorial for myself—I’m playing and singing better than I ever have. And I don’t want to lose that.”
Hot Tuna’s entry into this year’s Newport Folk Festival continues the rolling lineup that’s expanded with roughly three artists per week since early February. Today, the festival added a duo set from innovative alt-Americana guitarists William Tyler and Yasmin Williams. The other acts confirmed for the 2026 festvial ar Brandi Carlile, This Is Lorelei, CMAT, Lauryn Hill, Hayley Williams & Friends, Lizzy McAlpine, Hudson Freeman, Brittany Davis & Black Thunder and Gillian Welch & David Rawlings’ Grateful Dead Acoustic Reckoning.
Read “Jorma Kaukonen: Time Marches On” here.
