Photos/Review: 2026 Sea Hear Now Festival – Day 1 – Asbury Park, NJ

Words by Audra Lacey | Photos by Rod Snyder

The 2026 Sea Hear Now Festival returned to the beaches of Asbury Park this weekend, continuing its legacy of celebrating music, art, and surfing along the Jersey Shore. Day 1 of the event featured performances by Mumford & Sons, The Offspring, Chaka Khan, Shaggy, Men at Work, Fitz & The Tantrums, Susanna Hoffs, and so many more. With two stages on the beach and one in Bradley Park, fans could either dip their toes in the sand or ‘touch grass’ while they reveled in a seaside escape.

Check out highlights from Saturday below…

Anders Osborne

Seeing a festival set that features only guitar, vocals, and saxophone is probably not what one might expect at Sea Hear Now, but for veterans of the New Orleans music scene like Anders Osborne, it’s just another day in the neighborhood. The singer/songwriter, joined by Brad Walker on saxophone, delivered a stripped down, no-frills performance that found Saturday’s early birds grooving along at the Sand Stage. It was mesmerizing to see these two talented musicians face off as they played re-imagined songs from Osborne’s catalog including ‘Fools Gold’ and ‘Life Don’t Last That Long’.

Men At Work

Sea Hear Now is known for hosting a ‘nostalgia act’ on the main stage during the afternoon, just as the festival crowd starts filling up. In 2023, it was the The Beach Boys, in 2024 it was Kool & The Gang, and in 2025 the festival featured legendary rockers ZZ Top. This year, 80’s Australian pop stars Men At Work took the honor of hosting the festival’s unofficial kickoff party at the Surf Stage. The sun was peaking out of the clouds above as Men At Work’s founder Colin Hay led his band through iconic radio hits including ‘Overkill’, ‘Who Can It Be Now?’, and of course, ‘Down Under’.

Fitz and The Tantrums

Every festival should host Fitz and The Tantrums at some point – the Los Angeles-based group is tailor-made to get an audience going wild with their brand of high energy neo-soul. Fans turned out in droves to their set on Saturday, with Fitz Fever spreading from the Park Stage all the way to Convention Hall. Backed by a band that operated like a well-oiled machine, vocalists Michael Fitzpatrick and Noelle Scaggs shared strong harmonies during fan favorites like ‘Out of My League’ and ‘Hand Clap’.

Chaka Khan

If there was one thing we learned at the Surf Stage on Saturday evening, it’s that we should all aspire to be more like Chaka Khan. At 73, the queen of R&B slow jams made looking good and sounding good seem like an effortless feat during her captivating performance. Dressed in all black, with gold fringe cascading down her hips, and an iced out microphone to match, the fabulous songstress put on a show that inspired a sea of hip shakers, especially during massive hits like, ‘Tell Me Something Good’ and ‘I Feel For You’. After over four decades as a performer, she definitely proved that ain’t nobody does it better.

Susanna Hoffs

Next, the 6:00 line-up split between All-American Rejects and Susanna Hoffs all boiled down to a great generational divide. While Gen Z and young millennials flocked to the Park Stage for AAR, you could find pretty much every child of the 80’s at the Sand Stage for Susanna Hoffs. Best known as the co-founder of pop sensation The Bangles, Hoffs and her band brought festival attendees back to the cassette era with ‘Manic Monday’ and ‘Walk Like An Egyptian’. A well-placed cover of the Velvet Underground’s ‘Sunday Morning’ was a good move, too.

The Offspring

The Offspring are having a big weekend in Asbury Park. On Friday night, they played a sold-out show at the Stone Pony, and on Saturday they injected Sea Hear Now with a much-needed dose of pop punk gems. The band came out swinging with the 90’s classic ‘Come Out And Play’, and a short string of mainstream hits followed with ‘All I Want’ and ‘Staring at the Sun’. From there, the hour-long set featured a lot of stage banter and filler, including tributes to some late great musical heroes. Ozzy Osbourne’s ‘Crazy Train’ made it into the mix, as well as Dolly Parton’s ‘Jolene’ (which was a nice try, but Jack White does it better).

Shaggy

Did Sea Hear Now organizers underestimate the overall appeal of Shaggy in 2026? The Jamaican-American reggae star may have been playing at the smaller Sand Stage on Saturday night, but he was definitely giving main stage energy. Festival attendees filled every inch of the beach and the boardwalk for Shaggy’s 8:00 set, and by then they were all boozed up and ready to get down. “A bunch of drunks!”, Shaggy joked in between popular songs like ‘Boombastic’ ‘Boom Body’, and ‘Angel’. “My kind of party.”

Mumford & Sons

If you ask a female Mumford & Sons fan why they love these British folk rockers so much, you’ll get the full range of emotions. A tattooed beauty on the beach shared that some songs ‘make me want to go into battle’. A mural artist from Ortley Beach noted that the band helps her to feel grounded and safe ‘on a human level’. And perhaps the most honest answer of the night was from a Gen Z blonde in VIP who simply smiled and said, “I cry myself to sleep with them at night.”

Mumford & Sons clearly have a deep connection with their audience, and so as the headliners took the Surf Stage for the final set of Day 1, you could feel all of the love radiating in every direction. “It’s great to be back in America, baby!”, frontman Marcus Mumford announced to his faithful congregation in between strumming to songs including ‘Little Lion Man’, ‘Awake My Soul’ and ‘White Blank Page’.

Playing rich, multi-layered folk music with palpable heart and conviction, the band mixed in plenty of old favorites along with tunes from the new album Prizefighter. And they couldn’t leave Asbury Park without giving New Jersey the sweet taste of Springsteen – towards the end of the set, Jake Clemons from The E-Street Band joined in for an endearing cover of ‘Atlantic City’.

Mumford & Sons closed out their headlining slot with their smash hit ‘I Will Wait’, sending spectators off into the night with stars in their eyes. And for some first timers, a newfound appreciation for the banjo.

Stay tuned for coverage of Day 2!

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