Smooth, snappy, and tear-inducing sauces meet discerning taste buds once again at The Austin Chronicle’s Hot Sauce Festival, returning August 30 to a fresh new setting at Radio/East.
From 3pm to 9pm, 30 commercial competitors will sling competition-ready sauces inspired by East Asian flavors, South American cuisines, African ingredients, and many spicy histories in between, while a sampler platter of local performers treats attendees to sounds as varied as the sauces they’re savoring for the 36th year in a row.
Give your taste buds a rest from all that saucy sampling with Radio/East’s food vendors, including Shortwave’s diner fare, tacos from Veracruz All Natural, and poke bowls courtesy of Wow Poke. If your mouth is screaming for an extra cooldown, a frozen treat from Sun Garden Shaved Ice might be in order.
Tickets to the event, presented by Ardalan Injury Law and supported by JOTA Living, are available now for $20 – or at the festival doors for $25. A portion of each ticket purchased helps Central Texas Food Bank provide nutritious food to families across the state, meeting a demand that soared this year due to funding gaps for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program amid government shutdowns and political waffling. If you can’t make it out this year, you can still make a direct donation.
While you sample and sizzle under the summer sun, be sure to savor sounds from this year’s festival lineup. DJ Mahealani gets the party started with eclectic tunes spun on vinyl, then Libby and the Loveless invite festivalgoers to sweat out the heat with a little two-stepping. The Latin Dukes follow with a fusion sound, and alt-gaze rocker Lauren Lakis wraps up the festivities. Read more about each act below.
DJ Mahealani
Credit: Salihah Sadiq
DJ Mahealani
DJ Mahealani’s vinyl spinning has influenced a whole generation of Austin disc jockeys. Embodying the taste-of-everything spirit of the festival, her all-wax mixes are always rooted in a sharp sense of rhythm and expertly blend genres and eras: Michael Jackson, Peaches, New Order, and Blaqstarr share the turntable on her addictive Heatwave live mix. Each of her one-of-a-kind, location- and occasion-specific medleys contains contagious grooves and unexpected, familiar tunes. No matter where you are at Radio/East when she takes the stage, you’ll find yourself snapping and singing along.
Libby and the Loveless Credit: Cat Clemons III
Libby and the Loveless
Next up, Libby and the Loveless keep spice fans grooving with their classic honky-tonk flavor. Their 2025 debut album, Call It a Night, is equal parts soulful balladry and two-step-ready tracks. True to their name, lovelorn blues and humor-sprinkled odes to romantic runaways find their dancing boots in the hands of these experienced performers, who’ve done their time on the saloon stage and in the crowd. “Both Selena and I, we both started as dancers in the two-step scene and then graduated into being on the other side of the coin,” lead singer Libby Hallett told the Chronicle’s Kyra Bruce in an episode of her docu-concert series People To Wave To. The dance floor’s inclusive, inviting cadence shines through this fivepiece’s tunes.
The Latin Dukes
Eclectic quintet the Latin Dukes blend salsa, merengue, bolero, cumbia, jazz, and even more into their Latin fusion sound. These songs are heat-tested and made to bring people together, blending English and Spanish lyrics atop their style-spanning compositions. As the evening heats up, their mingled melodics maintain the spirit of experimentation and multicultural melding found in the snacks and sounds of the Hot Sauce Festival.
Lauren Lakis Credit: Lauren Lakis
Lauren Lakis
Thunderous and melodic, Lauren Lakis’ May full-length release, Deadlights, is a contemporary take on distortion-loving Nineties alternative rock and grumbling quiet-loud shoegaze. The acrobatic singer and adept guitarist balances bellowing rhythm with ethereal harmonies, tangling a hypnotic thread of darkwave synth throughout songs like “It’s So Amazing” and “With That Body.” The captivating result crosses genre and era conventions with a focus on catharsis and melody heavy enough to pull you in and refresh your palate as the night comes to an end.
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