In a year where we’ve seen numerous festivals go on hiatus or flat out call it quits, the first day of the Phillips Backyard Music Festival 2026 started of with some good news for live music in Victoria.
Friday tickets were completely sold out meaning 5,000 would pack the Phillips Brewery for day 1. This news followed the sell out of Sunday tickets as well as full weekend passes months prior. Saturday tickets are still available, but not many.
Gates for Day 1 opened at 4:30pm allowing those still at work to see arrive to see the majority of the scheduled acts. The festival grounds this year have re-expanded to the Mattulia Lands at Rock Bay with the food trucks, merch, sponsor activations and Music BC Dylan Willows stage located along the much larger space.
Speaking of the Music BC Stage, the stage now named in honour the late [email protected] morning show host, is much larger this year as well. The stage itself is the same one used at this year’s Victoria Canada Day and Victoria Folk Music Festival. Last year the stage was a small tent.
Early festival goers had the opportunity to stop at the Phillips ‘Glam Booth’ where there was face painting, hair tinsel and glitter and bracelets to add to one’s festival look. The booth had a line of tables and vanity mirrors to apply various accessories. At the booth there was also a Dinosour plinko game where you could win Phillips Dinosour themed prizes.
Other added features to the festival this year included a set of bleachers along the wall along Pembroke Street, an accessible viewing platform near the breweries fencing and the addition of a video screen that Victoria Ska & Reggae Fest has utilized for the last few years.
Weather forecasts for the weekend looked absolutely perfect from my perspective and Day 1 turned out exactly as I expected. As much as many people prefer hot sunshine, a mostly overcast sky in mild warm temperatures is fantastic when you’re standing on asphalt for 6-8 hours with very little areas of shade on site.
Most of the music for Day 1 was geared toward hip-hop and R&B with one exception that we’ll get to.
Kicking off the day was Vancouver’s Dacey, with a 30 minute set. Being the first act on the massive Phillips main stage is always a challenging task with crowds often being quite small early on. But as many musicians learn early on, always perform as if it’s to a sold out crowd and Dacey were able to pull it off.
Phillips Backyard veteran, Nicky Mackenzie returned for her third performance on the main stage. Each show she’s done at the festival has looked different on stage and shows how her music as evolved in the last couple years.
Calgary rap duo Cartel Madras was a late replacement to the main stage lineup after Victoria’s Sophia Stel dropped out due to a schedule conflict. Music genre-wise, Cartel Madras ended up being a better fit as they quickly brought the audience into a hip-hop mood.
The Music BC Dylan Willows Stage opened with the gentle jazz/R&B fused vocals of Vancouver’s Bukola. It was just her, a keyboardist and a sax player. Festival goers entering at 5:30pm were treated to some Bossa Nova music and a jazzy rendition of Beyonce’s ‘Crazy in Love’.
Vancouver’s Mikey Josey brought some Bruno Mars vibes with a Filipino flavour. During his set the pop/R&B singer even taught a little bit of Tagalog to the audience for a section of one of his songs.
Victoria’s Blush. were third on the Dylan Willows stage performing between main stage acts Cartel Madras and Duckwrth. Stylistically it was an odd fit for Day 1 since Blush. are a alternative indie rock band and probably would have been better suited being schedule Saturday or Sunday, but at the same time the genre contrast probably made them stand out more.
Closing out the Music BC stage was Vancouver’s Kimmortal. While Kimmortal was solo on stage playing their own beats and rapping powerful lyrics, they had an incredible sunset view surrounding the stage and audience.
Back on the main stage, Duckwrth put on one what will probably end up being one of the best shows of the festival. It’s difficult to pinpoint what genre he fits in. He’s a little hip-hop, some R&B, but then there’s some alternative in there too. He doesn’t have a DJ, he has a full band. Whatever the genre, Duckwrth was very entertaining with full command of the stage.
Closing out the night was multi-grammy award winning rapper Chance The Rapper. It was the first time in a decade that he has performed in our province. Chance would reiterate on numerous occasions of his hour and ten minute set how happy he was to be in Canada and the how he loved the Victoria crowd hoping the audiences in his upcoming Canadian stops would be just as good as ours. At the end of the show, the crowd didn’t want to leave. Even as the flood lights were raised at 11pm and illuminated the audience were still hoping for an encore. Unfortunately that couldn’t happen due to the 11pm sound curfew.
Friday was a solid start to what is set to be possibly a historic weekend for the music scene. The hype around Sunday’s lineup is massive. Saturday’s lineup features Father John Misty, Sudan Archives, Jon and Roy and more. Tickets and full festival info is available at phillipsbackyard.com
