The festival's origins trace back to a 1993 concert that Pearl Jam performed at the Empire Polo Club while boycotting venues controlled by Ticketmaster.

The show validated the site's viability for hosting large events, leading to the inaugural Coachella Festival being held over the course of two days in October 1999, three months after Woodstock '99.

[7] The site was selected because the band refused to play in Los Angeles as a result of a dispute with Ticketmaster over service charges applied to ticket purchases.

[9] On July 16, 1999, Goldenvoice announced that the Indio City Council had approved the festival and would provide $90,000 for services such as traffic control and public safety.

The funds came with a guarantee of repayment from the promoter, as the city was keen to avoid incurring another loss; the previous year's Big Gig festival cost Indio $16,000 due to last-minute changes to the lineup and poor attendance.

[11] The Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival was officially announced on July 28 with a preliminary lineup of 40 acts;[12] tickets went on sale on August 7.

Headlining the event were Beck, Tool, and Rage Against the Machine; other acts included the Chemical Brothers, Morrissey, A Perfect Circle, Jurassic 5 and Underworld.

Originally, promoters had hoped to make the event three days (Friday to Sunday) and even considered the UK group Massive Attack as the third-day headliner.

[16] The event went smoothly, with the well-behaved crowd starkly contrasting with the violence that plagued Woodstock '99; the biggest challenges to Coachella concertgoers were temperatures exceeding 100 °F and the decisions of which of the 80-plus acts to attend.

[20] Instead, Goldenvoice partnered with promoter Pasquale Rotella to stage the electronic dance music festival Nocturnal Wonderland at the Empire Polo Club in September 2000.

[30] Issues with securing a headliner threatened to doom the event until Perry Farrell agreed to bring his reunited group Jane's Addiction to the proceedings.

[22] Multiple changes were made for that year: one less tent was used,[37] reducing the number of stages from five to four,[34] and a fence in the middle of the polo field was removed to increase the openness of the site.

[22] The 2008 festival drew an attendance of 151,666 and grossed $13.8 million,[46] but lost money, due to tickets not selling out and high booking fees paid for Prince and Roger Waters.

[51] Despite Tollett's reservations about holding a festival in 2010 due to the economy,[52] Coachella drew 75,000 spectators each day that year, for an estimated aggregate attendance of 225,000, surpassing previous records.

[54] International travel was disrupted by the eruption of the Eyjafjallajökull volcano in Iceland, resulting in some European acts, such as Frightened Rabbit, Gary Numan and Delphic, canceling their appearances at the festival.

[84][85] In January 2017, reports circulated that AEG owner Philip Anschutz had donated to many right-wing causes, including organizations promoting LGBTQ discrimination and climate change denial.

[113] Goldenvoice was also forced to abandon plans for Kanye West to headline, as they could not accommodate his request to build a giant dome for his performance in the middle of the festival grounds.

[120] On April 10, a documentary profiling the festival's 20-year history, Coachella: 20 Years in the Desert, was released on YouTube to coincide with the original start date of the 2020 event.

The vacancy in the Sunday night headliner slot was filled by Swedish House Mafia – who previously had not been scheduled for a specific day – for a joint performance with the Weeknd.

[151] Paul Clemente, Coachella's art director since 2009,[152] said, "I think the level of detail and finish and artistry and scale and complexity and technology, everything is constantly getting notched up, ratcheted up.

[153] Poetic Kinetics has designed several giant moving art installations for past Coachella festivals, including a snail in 2013 ("Helix Poeticus"), an astronaut in 2014 ("Escape Velocity"), and a caterpillar that "metamorphosized" into a butterfly in 2015 ("Papilio Merraculous").

A few of the visual artists, such as Hotshot the Robot, Robochrist Industries, the Tesla Coil (Cauac), Cyclecide, and The Do LaB, alongside avant-garde performance troupe Lucent Dossier Experience, have appeared for several consecutive years.

The fines benefit the city's General Fund, which covers operating costs, public work services, and the police and fire departments.

[160] In 2007, Coachella teamed up with Global Inheritance to start a 10-for-1 recycling program, in which anyone who collects ten empty water bottles receives a free full one.

At the 2012 event, on-site facilities included recycling, a general store, showers, mobile phone charging stations and an internet cafe with free WiFi.

The promoter has allowed some of Coachella's acts to make appearances in the region prior to the festival and between weekends, but only at events and venues owned or controlled by Goldenvoice's parent company AEG; one such example was Jay-Z's concert at Staples Center in 2010.

In 2003, Goldenvoice agreed to work with the organizers of Field Day, a New York-based festival modeled after Coachella, to help promote and produce the event,[187] although the show was completely overhauled from its original vision.

[188] In September 2014, Goldenvoice announced it had entered into a joint venture with Red Frog Events to help them promote and produce their Firefly Music Festival.

[195] Goldenvoice's other festival at the Empire Polo Club, Stagecoach, has been called a "cousin" of Coachella, but it has grown at a faster pace, eventually selling out for the first time in 2012 with 55,000 attendees.

[204] In 2016, Goldenvoice staged Desert Trip, which featured older rock oriented and legacy acts such as the Rolling Stones, Paul McCartney, and Bob Dylan.