Festivals
Review
Pepsi MAX presents Reading 2026: as it happened
Charli XCX, Raye, Fontaines DC and Dave – all the best from the weekend's action
Reading festival has been running, by some measures, since 1961. Long-since twinned with its partner event in Leeds, they’ve made a fair bit of noise this time round about starting a new era: Reading and Leeds 2.0. A genre-agnostic collection of six big name British and Irish headliners have been booked. The marketing for the twin festivals, as well, seems to have attempted to reach out beyond what you might consider to be its traditional audience.
There may be voices that object to the festival moving closer to pop music – if so, you’d have to at least counter that the timing could hardly be better, given the current strength of the genre. Through most of pop’s history, the received logic is that artists tend to dumb down their output in order to maximise their sales. That’s not true in 2026: acts are taking big, bold artistic swings, and their careers are also benefitting handsomely as a result.
That’s true of Rosalía’s recent skyrocketing-popularity, and it’s also the case for Reading’s Friday night co-headliner Charli xcx. Both artists have reached substantial new levels of success by also making their boldest, wildest work to date.
More on that in a moment. We’ll also keep track of which songs we hear most across the site, throughout the weekend, in an attempt to statistically work out what Reading’s 2026 Festival Anthem of Choice is. Feel free to have a guess, in the meantime.
Friday
Slovakian pop star ADÉLA may well be one of the artists influenced by pop’s great swing towards creative risks – she appears to mirror both FKA Twigs and Rosalía’s taste for a strong focus on technically ambitious dance routines. She describes herself as having grown up “too much of a bad bitch to appear in Swan Lake” and indeed, it’s undeniably unexpected to discover a singer performing a rave music track whilst dancing en pointe, early on a Friday afternoon at Reading Festival. Though away from these classical influences, said rave music is very much the vibe here.
Friday evening features one hell of a three act run: Geese, Charli xcx and Fontaines D.C. Geese’s debut album is firmly established as one of the finest of the decade so far. They manage to be musically knotty, arty and commendably experimental, yet still maintain a satisfying listenability. So the songs are fantastic then – and they get extra points for their intro video melding together British and New York culture. Those songs are played with enjoyable competence, even if you sense they’re still building their way up to becoming as essential a live band as they are on record.
Then we’re on to Charli, whose stage show feels significantly more considered than her last tour. She sensibly continues to focus on her catalogue from Brat onwards, so there’s no shortage of quality music to pick from, though a fantastic 2am deep rave version of 2019 track ‘Blame It On Your Love’ doesn’t go amiss, either.
But other elements of the performance impress too: substantial thought has clearly gone into making it all look fantastic, and satisfyingly arty, on the big screens. It’s questionable whether pyrotechnics have ever sold a track better than they do on ‘House’, the lead single from the Wuthering Heights soundtrack. The set’s mid-section is a riot and barely feels willing to waste a second. It’s absolutely the performance of the weekend.
You’d love to have been in the room when the festival were deciding the ordering of the headliners. After all of that from Charli, Fontaines D.C. are in danger of feeling a bit like having a salad for your main course, when you’ve already had a pizza for your starter. But make no mistake: it’s a fantastically made salad. You’d definitely be posting about the salad on your Stories afterwards. Anytime anybody asks you your thoughts on salads, this’ll be the one you want to tell them about.
In amongst a frantic weekend of action, it’s worth pausing to remember what a remarkable phenomenon Fontaines are. They’ve become enormously popular with the guitar-loving masses, whilst still being adored by sniffy music critics; it’s an impressive feat to have pulled off. Tonight, they seemingly take an interest in delayed gratification – only a thin portion of the big screens is viable at first, synchronised with a low-hanging lighting rig. This keeps things feeling enclosed and intimate. And besides, they’re playing with such thrilling intensity (possibly as a by-product of some earlier technical issues and recent personal grief), it’d be nice to be able to properly see them giving it their all.
Saturday
You could hardly accuse 21-year-old American singer-songwriter Sombr of being unwilling to commit to his performance. You get the sense he walks to the beat of a different drum, as well: from the start, the big screens see him arriving backstage at the festival in the back of an ambulance (!), before steadily, teasingly making his way onto the stage.
There’s a large quantity of performance razzmatazz on show, then – all of which counts for nothing, of course, if you haven’t got the songs to back it up. Sombr (real name Shane Michael Boose) needn’t worry here either. He’s got genuine field-uniting hits in ‘back to friends’, ‘undressed’ and ‘Homewrecker’. And hey, a small bonus: if you’ve grown bored of the regular section of gigs where acts introduce each member of their backing band in turn, Sombr has come up with a far tidier way of giving them their dues, flashing their names up on screen as the camera pans around them.
It really feels as though Dave throws everything at his headline set, with an unquestionably lavish quantity of pyrotechnics and a full backing band at times. Indeed, during a deeply self-excavating ‘The Boy Who Played The Harp’, a 20+ string section also joins. And then there’s the guests: James Blake and Central Cee make appearances, but best of all is Kano, who joins Dave for an incendiary ‘3 Wheel-Ups’ before the more thoughtful delights of recent album highlight ‘Chapter 16’ (which could well be the male equivalent of Charli xcx and Lorde’s iconic collab ‘Girl, so confusing’). Of every set all weekend, it also definitely features the most lads on their friend’s shoulders, filming themselves rapping along perfectly to every word.
It may also be thanks to the artistic boldness of the likes of Charli xcx and Rosalía that has meant Raye felt able to release This Music May Contain Hope back in March, an epic, 73 minute concept album taking in a dizzying number of styles and ideas.
She takes confident risks in her live show as well, not least casually tossing away her biggest (and best) track ‘Escapism’ as her opening number. From there she settles into the majority of her set, evoking the spirit of a late hours jazz club performance that’s firing on all cylinders – the focus kept on musicianship, vocal showboating and convivial charm.
Well, if you had Raye’s voice you’d be inclined to showboat as well. That, plus the taste for musical drama, all stands to make her comfortably the most logical possible name to be offered the next Bond theme. The backing band that can really play the hell out of the songs when they want to. That charm of Raye’s, meanwhile, extends to her being very open about what she perceives to be the set’s failings: broken lighting here; restarting a song there. It feels surprisingly unique, and certainly endearing.
Sunday
In the Ballroom tent, literally decked out with numerous chandeliers, you can detect Americana influences (appropriately enough, given their name), but Westside Cowboy are a British kind of rambunctious, whilst still trading in tort and intricate indie. They seem in high spirits, having celebrated the release of their debut album just nine days earlier. They share singing duties between them, but Aoife Anson O’Connell’s vocal is most striking, often evoking that of Big Thief’s Adrianne Lenker.
A secret guest for the weekend, Lola Young brings her signature vocal talents and pained performance style to the main stage – pain that is sometimes expressed as anguish, sometimes anger, sometimes withering contempt. The camera is also an appealing extra character she directly addresses, at times in order to simply speak to the audience, other times as a character for her to take her anger out on.
Straight after, Loyle Carner provides an afternoon of chill hop hop, perfect for sunshine that very rudely never shows up. Vulnerability is a big part of the brand, an appealing trait he shares with last night’s headliner Dave. One of the ways he adds intensity into the mix is via some of his more outspoken lyrics, not shying away from stating a viewpoint on Nigel Farage and Middle Eastern politics. There’s also Richard Spaven’s drumming, at times jazz-influenced in its intricacies and intensity.
Staying with laid back hip hop, though with a distinctly US flavour, WHATMORE are performing back on the smaller Ballroom stage. The New York five piece only play for half their allotted time slot (and seem a little surprised they’re expected to perform even that long), but perhaps brevity suits them. They set the vibe perfectly though. They’re an unqualified joy.
Florence + the Machine’s performance seems to be themed around a pagan ritual going badly wrong. She oversees proceedings, only too happy to act as something of a cult leader for us. She indisputably has enough commanding stage presence for the job, which neatly offsets her trademark otherworldliness, as well as the lighter notes of her musical repertoire – though if you’ve only maintained a passing awareness of her career, you may be surprised by how comparatively muscular the live sound is.
Her dancers occasionally act undead, motivated at one point to bite at her long black dress. “It’s actually quite scary”, a young woman is overheard commenting, suggesting Florence is nailing the tone. It makes for a highly watchable show. You half expect a Chase & Status fan to be sacrificed on stage.
Meanwhile, you may or may not agree with musicians when they complain about mobile phone filming at concerts, though the rousing justification Welsh offers before ‘Dog Days Are Over’ feels like one of the most persuasive a musician has yet issued: “Filming this song will stop you from experiencing this song. And is that not why you f**king came?!” The whole field seems more than happy to oblige and pogos along, even as the rain gradually becomes torrential.
Then follows one of festival-land’s all time vibe-switches. Chase & Status are our sixth and final headliner. Can you imagine them ever breaking out a mid-set acoustic ballad? No chance. Their performance is 75 minutes of chunky bass lines and huge drops, allowing Reading to expend any last drops of energy it has left. They’re industry stalwarts by now, and some of their younger fans seem confused by ‘Blind Faith’ and ‘Count On Me’, both now comfortably over a decade old. Their staging is fun and on-brand, too: on one side of the stage sits a bus shelter, the other a burnt out car.
Presumably due to restrictions on late night amplified music, Reading traditionally goes very big on silent discos. This creates a vast playground across the arena, with 5/6 DJs competing for audience attention at any one time. It also creates extra fun for the audience. Why not, say, head into the ‘yellow channel’ venue and try to convert as many people as possible to switch over to the green channel instead?
But what, you possibly ask, was Reading festival’s ultimate anthem of the weekend? Using out statistical methodology, we hear Mr Brightside no less than seven times over the course of the weekend. It’s a good opportunity to study the theory that every generation has their one, ultimate anthem. For millennials that’s obviously Mr Brightside. By comparison, the great Gen X anthem, ‘Common People’, isn’t heard once all weekend.
It now seems pretty reasonable to suggest what Gen Z’s own anthem may be: Icona Pop’s ‘I Don’t Care’, which we hear five times throughout the festival. (Any guesses on the only other track that beat it? Skepta’s ‘Too Many Man’ gets six plays).
All that, then, plus a festival that gets many of the basics right: phone reception holds up well; the sound is great all weekend; all the stage redesigns have been inarguably successful. The festival will return in 2027. Maybe they’ll call it Reading 2.1?
