Lizzo’s Coachella cameo puts Labubu back in the spotlight

Lizzo’s surprise turn during Sexyy Red’s set at Coachella pushed Labubu back into the exact lane that keeps it hot: celebrity sightline, flash-photo culture and fast-moving style. On Friday, April 10, at the Sahara Tent in Indio, California, Lizzo joined the performance, played her flute and worked the crowd, with Labubu pulled into the visual mix of the moment. That is the kind of placement that matters for a figure like this. When Labubu shows up in a festival scene, it stops reading like a shelf collectible and starts acting like part of the outfit.

That distinction is why repeated celebrity adjacency keeps paying off for Pop Mart. Labubu has already been working its way through music, fashion and lifestyle spaces, but a cameo like this gives the character a new kind of proof point. It is not just ownership that is being shown off. It is the mood of the appearance itself, the sort of quick-hit spectacle that lives well in photos and short video clips. In that setting, specific Labubu designs and accessories behave more like status markers than toys, especially when a recognizable name like Lizzo is attached to the scene.

The Coachella setting only sharpened that effect. The festival’s first weekend ran April 10-12, and Lizzo was one of the surprise guests in a lineup that also included Joe Jonas and Snoop Dogg. That puts the Labubu sighting inside one of the most shareable entertainment environments in the country, where a single stage appearance can travel far beyond the desert. For a character built to circulate visually, that kind of exposure can keep demand humming even when the market narrative starts to cool.

The business side explains why the sighting lands so hard. Pop Mart reported first-half 2025 revenue of 13.88 billion yuan, up 204% year over year, while net income jumped 397% to 4.57 billion yuan. Labubu-related products generated $418 million in global sales in the first half of 2025, and The Monsters IP, which includes Labubu, brought in about 4.814 billion yuan and accounted for 34.7% of total revenue in that period. Those are not novelty numbers. They show a character with real commercial weight.

Labubu’s appeal also comes from how specific the character is. Pop Mart describes it as a kind-hearted monster with high ears and serrated teeth, and Kasing Lung first developed The Monsters in 2015, drawing on Nordic mythology and fairy tales. That backstory gives the figure enough personality to travel between toy culture and fashion culture without losing its identity. Even as some collectors worry the craze is getting less exclusive, a cameo like Lizzo’s shows how quickly Labubu can snap back into the center of the conversation when a major name turns it into part of a public moment.