The Iron Blossom Festival is back in bloom this weekend with 22 acts poised to perform at Midtown Green on Saturday, Sept. 19 and Sunday, Sept. 20. After an initially rain-soaked but ultimately triumphant 2025 event, which featured successful headlining sets from the Lumineers and Vampire Weekend, organizers have once again outdone themselves lineup-wise. Attendees can look forward to stratospheric top-of-the-poster talent, some of the most buzzed-about bands in recent memory and a wealth of down-bill talent worth exploring, including a handful of standout acts with roots in Central Virginia.
Here are some of the sights, sounds and expected highlights you won’t want to miss.
Witness history on Midtown Green
More than half of the acts hitting the stage over the festival’s two days have never gigged in Richmond, including the two most established names. Jack White’s post-White Stripes era got off to a roaring start in 2012 with the release of “Blunderbuss,” and the guitarist gave a blistering performance that year at the amphitheater on Charlottesville’s downtown mall now known as Ting Pavilion. Several albums later, Central Virginia is ready for the next chapter, which will unfold on Sunday night.
Saturday’s last set will come courtesy of iconic dance-rock band LCD Soundsystem. There was a time when it looked like James Murphy’s Grammy-winning, Brooklyn-born project would never play at our house. Murphy and company gave a series of emotionally intense farewell shows in 2011, seemingly closing the book on the possibility of a performance around these parts. A handful of years later, rumors of a reunion proved to be true, and new music followed in 2017 with the release of the “American Dream” full-length. Another new album is reportedly in the works, but longtime fans will likely welcome any and all setlist selections from a bandleader who has proven himself to be someone great.
Hail a hometown hero’s triumphant return
McKinley Dixon has been busy in the few years since he moved from Richmond to Chicago. Last summer, he released “Magic, Alive!” — a masterstroke of hip-hop crafted with rich instrumentation — to widespread acclaim. He’s been interviewed by the uber-impactful music critic Anthony Fantano of The Needle Drop. He’s performed all over the United States, the United Kingdom, the European Union and China. Yet amid those expanded horizons, he’s maintained close connections to his prior hometown. “I’m a Richmond rapper, even though now I live in Chicago,” Dixon mentioned to Stereogum last year. “Magic, Alive!” came to life at Spacebomb Studios on Robinson Street, and Dixon made sure to stop by Richmond Music Hall when touring behind that album. Still, any Dixon performance in town is an event in and of itself, and attendees would be wise to prioritize his set.
Scream “There’s a bomb in my car!”
Rising rock group Geese last stopped in Richmond as the opening act for King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard’s undeniably explosive, inexpressibly humid August 2024 show on Brown’s Island. In the two years since, Geese has become one of the most critically acclaimed breakout bands of the 2020s, thanks to its year-end-list-topping 2025 album, “Getting Killed,” and lead singer Cameron Winter’s solo effort, “Heavy Metal.” Speaking of explosiveness, those who have been keeping track of Geese’s recent live performances have likely noted that the chorus of “Trinidad,” the wild opening track from “Getting Killed,” provides an energetic release unlike any other you’re likely to experience at the festival. Come sundown on Sunday, keep an eye out for where mosh pits might break out, and be ready to scream at the top of your lungs.
Peer into a peerless vision of R&B’s future
Nobody is doing it like Dijon, and Dijon does it like nobody else. The alternative R&B iconoclast is leading from the front when it comes to what the genre can look like going forward, both in terms of his recorded output — “Baby” ranked among 2025’s most well-reviewed albums — and his approach to performing live. In the studio, Dijon welcomes collaboration and subverts process to form compositions that are at once fragmentary and unforgettable. In the live setting, he assembles an array of innovative instrumentalists to build those compositions back up piece by piece, with loads of pathos and a commitment to presenting compositions in new ways. His Coachella performance from earlier this year has even been compared to the Talking Heads’ groundbreaking concert film “Stop Making Sense.” Yet for an artist as forward-thinking as Dijon, you can always bet that the best is yet to come, making his Iron Blossom performance a must-see…