The Fugees’ best-known record turns 30 this year, and Central Park is the place they’ll mark it. Global Citizen announced Thursday (Aug. 13) that Ms. Lauryn Hill and Wyclef Jean will headline its 2026 festival on the Great Lawn on Saturday, Sept. 26, with an anniversary performance of The Score, per Rolling Stone and Pitchfork.
The Score is the group’s second and final album and holds their cover of Roberta Flack’s “Killing Me Softly” plus “Ready or Not” and “Fu-Gee-La,” Rolling Stone notes. The Fugees planned a big tour for the album’s 25th anniversary in 2021, but it never quite happened, so the festival is a rare chance to hear it in New York. It also follows Hill’s own Diaspora Calling! festival in the U.K., which Complex says celebrated 30 years of The Score with surprise guests and more than 35,000 fans.
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The rest of the bill is Lenny Kravitz, John Legend, Lainey Wilson, Shaboozey and the K-pop group TOMORROW X TOGETHER. Hugh Jackman, Global Citizen’s ambassador, hosts, with appearances from Rachel Brosnahan and Gayle King. Billboard reports that more names are coming. They arrived the following month, when Alicia Keys, Victoria Monét and others joined the bill.
I believe all of us can do something to make the world a better place, so I’m proud to be performing at the Global Citizen Festival for the first time.
Lainey Wilson, Billboard
Wilson said it was a chance to support work around children’s education, farmers and food security, and access to electricity. Those are the festival’s three goals: opportunities for two million children to go to school, support for 1.5 million smallholder farmers and electricity for 2.5 million homes.
Why it matters
The announcement follows Global Citizen’s biggest project of the summer. The group produced the first-ever FIFA World Cup final halftime show, which Billboard says raised $60 million for the FIFA Global Citizen Education Fund. The details of that show, from Madonna’s roller rink to Shakira’s “Dai Dai,” are in our recap of the World Cup halftime.
For Hill and Jean, the festival is another stop in a busy year of public appearances. Hill was honored with a tribute at the BET Awards in June. The Great Lawn show is free to attend through the Global Citizen app or a lottery, and the festival will close out the summer, as Jackman put it, “with a day of music and advocacy.”
Added to the High Grailed archive on October 12, 2026.
