Hayley Williams headlined Friday night at the Newport Folk Festival 2026 with a set billed as "Hayley Williams & Friends," living up to the name by bringing out a string of guests including Wednesday's Karly Hartzman, Jenny Lewis, Jack Antonoff, Lucy Dacus and several others. The stripped-down performance fitted the festival's format of established artists reworking their material in intimate collaborative sets, and gave the Paramore singer a rare chance to perform songs live that had missed their original touring window.

The show opened with the title track from her new solo album, Ego Death at a Bachelorette Party, with guests joining for individual songs, including Hartzman on "Mirtazapine" and Antonoff on "Good Ol' Days". Williams also debuted songs from her 2020 and 2021 solo records live for the first time, having had touring plans scrapped by the Covid-19 pandemic, while Lewis joined for a cover of Rilo Kiley's "Silver Lining" and the set closed with a mass sing-along of Bill Withers' "Lean on Me".