Lollapalooza 2026 will go down in history as the year when the pop girlies ruled the stage. And John Summit.
The Naperville born-and-bred DJ landed a slot at the same time as Lorde, one of five heavy-hitting women artists out of eight headliners this year. For his headlining homecoming set, he pushed his usual high-energy performance past the max, riling up the crowd with “Chicago, let’s f—— go!” He opened with “Shadows” off his latest album, “Ctrl Escape,” turning the packed field in front of Bud Light stage into his personal club.
Summit posted to his Instagram stories earlier this week that Lollapalooza “inspired his crazy a– journey in life.”
Just a few years ago he was working as an accountant and hustling as a DJ on the side, eventually saving enough to quit the stability of a corporate 9-to-5 job and taking a leap of faith to go off “the deep end” and all in on making music. At the time, the pandemic had shut everything down but Summit, born John Schuster, was just ramping up.
He submitted records to scores of labels, with one taking a chance. Defected Records released his track “Deep End,” which went viral and propelled his meteoric rise to global DJ stardom. He became known for his hypnotic, explosive tech house beats and infectious vocal hooks. He also built a following on social media, where he chronicles not just the headlining gigs on the festival circuit but also his day-to-day life like his workouts, embracing the cringe and making him accessible to millions of fans.
Summit’s Thursday Lollapalooza set was a rare headlining gig for a DJ. With his own independent label, Experts Only, and even his own EDM festivals (the second iteration of festival named after his label takes place in September in New York), as his collab track with Gorgon City goes, “The party’s just begun. Is everybody having fun?” Perhaps no one is having more fun than John Summit.
Check out photos below from his headlining set Thursday night at the Bud Light Stage.
