Green Day cement their legacy at Download Festival

Green Day draw one of the biggest headline crowds in Download history as they light up Friday night

Over the last three decades, the list of festivals Green Day haven’t headlined has gotten smaller and smaller by the year.

With less than a handful of major UK events left to be ticked off, Donington Park’s annual get together has previously been deemed a little too metal for their punk anthems to truly hit, but times have changed. The festival has pivoted to embrace a broader spectrum of the alternative genre over the last few years, and in 2025 it’s finally time for the trio to take on Download Festival.

With ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ playing through the stage speakers, the iconic drunk punk bunny darts across the stage to signal the imminent arrival of the weekend’s first main stage headliner. A few handstands, worms across the stage, and a ‘Blitzkrieg Bop’ singalong later, and Billie Joe Armstrong and co. emerge, walking on to a remix of ‘The Imperial March’.

An inflated hand holding a heart grenade sits centre stage, and from the second the opening bars of ‘American Idiot’ kick in Green Day have declared Download Festival their playground. Absolute carnage breaks out across the arena, and even the hardest of metalheads can’t fight the urge to sing along; cheers going up as Armstrong condemns the fascism of Trump and his administration during anti-war anthem ‘Holiday’.

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As they rattle through hit after hit, it’s baffling that it’s taken the titans of modern rock this long to stand in this position. From the rallying cries of 2009 single ‘Know Your Enemy’ – a fan picked from the crowd to scream the empowering bridge – to the iconic bassline of ‘Longview’, every moment is met with sheer joy from what appears to be one of the biggest crowds gathered before a Download headliner in a long while.

Armstrong shouts “yee-haw” as the audience erupts into a mass rendition of ‘Welcome To Paradise’; he’s a showman like no other. Encouraging a chant of “you fat bastard” dedicated to Trump, the frontman laughs maniacally as he leads his bandmates through lightning paced punk rager ‘St. Jimmy’, confetti bursting out and showering those tightly packed into the area in front of the stage.

The likes of ‘Minority’ and ‘Basket Case’ are simply made for stages like this, but even when the pace is slowed for solemn protest song ‘21 Guns’ the momentum never slips. In fact, it’s in one of the set’s softer moments that one of the most magical things happens, the weekend’s first drops of rain falling as Armstrong croons the line “Here comes the rain again” in emotional mega-hit ‘Wake Me Up When September Ends’.

As the evening draws to a close with 9-minute 2004 epic ‘Jesus Of Suburbia’ and Dookie classic ‘When I Come Around’ – the latter seeing an inflatable blimp embellished with the words ‘BAD YEAR’ float over the crowd – it’s undeniable that Green Day are a band at the top of their game. Building up an unbeatable catalogue of hits over the last 35 years, Armstrong grins as he thanks the crowd before a heart-warming closing rendition of ‘Good Riddance (Time Of Your Life)’, his bandmates showering him with confetti during the final notes.

With the rain still drizzling as fireworks light up the sky, anyone who doubted Green Day’s ability to take on the biggest slot at this festival has surely spent the last 105 minutes eating their words. A spectacular display from one of the finest live bands in the game, this one is going to go down in Download history.

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