This Weekend: Erykah Badu Brings the Whole City to Maymont

Some weekends you pick a show. This weekend you pick a lane. On Saturday and Sunday, August 8–9, the Richmond Jazz and Music Festival takes over Maymont — the 100-acre Victorian estate and public park on the James — with Erykah Badu leading a two-day lineup, and it is, comfortably, the biggest homegrown music gathering of the summer.

Let's talk about the setting first, because at Maymont the setting is half the ticket. A jazz-and-soul festival on the grounds of a century-old estate — rolling lawns, gardens, the river nearby — is a fundamentally different proposition than a paved amphitheater lot. Maymont is where Richmond goes to remember it lives in one of the prettier river cities on the East Coast, and staging a marquee festival there leans all the way into that. Bring something to sit on. Get there before you think you need to.

The draw is Badu, and Badu is not a casual booking. The self-proclaimed queen of neo-soul — "On & On," Baduizm, a live show that bends time — is exactly the kind of headliner that turns a regional festival into a destination one. Neo-soul, jazz, and R&B are the festival's home turf, and a Badu headline set on estate grounds at dusk is the sort of thing people plan their August around. Consider it planned.

If the festival isn't your speed, the weekend has a genuine second option on the water. Sunday, August 9, 5 Seconds of Summer play Allianz Amphitheater at Riverfront — the Australian pop-rock outfit that has quietly aged from boy-band adjacency into a real arena act, and a very different energy than a soul festival in a garden. It's the summer in a nutshell: an estate and an amphitheater, neo-soul and pop-rock, both going off within a couple miles of each other on the same Sunday. Richmond, for one weekend, contains multitudes.

And the clubs, as ever, keep their own hours. Looking just past the weekend, The Broadberry has Royal Coda on Monday, August 10, and The National lights up Tuesday, August 11 with Loe Shimmy and Lakeyah — proof that Richmond's mid-size rooms never actually cede the calendar to the big outdoor events. The festival is the headline; the clubs are the connective tissue that makes this a scene instead of a summer of one-offs.

But make no mistake about the center of gravity. This is a Maymont weekend. In a summer with no Friday Cheers, the Richmond Jazz and Music Festival is the closest thing to the old communal-gathering feeling — a big, diverse, distinctly Richmond crowd spread across a beautiful piece of public-facing ground, an out-of-town legend at the top of the bill, and the James doing what it always does in the background. That's the show that reminds you the whole city still turns out for music when the music's worth turning out for.

So here's your weekend, decided: Saturday and Sunday belong to Maymont and Badu. If pop-rock is more your religion, Allianz has you Sunday night. Either way, you'll be outside, you'll be by the river, and you'll be reminded that even in the strange summer the riverfront went quiet, Richmond found somewhere gorgeous to gather and sing. Pack accordingly. See you on the lawn.

Sources: The BIG Richmond Summer Music Field Guide 2026 — RVA Mag; The National — JamBase venue schedule; The Broadberry concert schedule 2026 — Concertfix