Photo Credit: Anthony Hunt
Download Festival 2026 … horns up and take a bow. You absolutely smashed it. And for us we are now reassessing our Mount Rushmore of best ever festivals and this has booted the doors off the conversion. We’ve spent the last twenty years arguing it was probably the 2006 or 2010 editions of Download or possibly the anniversary special in 2023 which we looked back on most fondly. Not anymore because now there is Download 2026. And we say that as a writing crew who has been to sixteen Download Festivals since 2006. Sixteen years of mud baths, sunstroke, bands missing flights, star studded secret sets and other sets cut short by thunderstorms, toilets that made the infamous Trainspotting scene look like heaven, and moments of joy so undeniable they could make your heart explode through your personalised battle jacket. But now perhaps we have a new rock n’ roll festival overlord.
Download 2026, had the best line-up, the best atmosphere, the best weather, the best crowd and is now standing alone among the best three days of our gig-going lives. Because Download 2026 felt more like a gathering of one great festival family than tribes, at the exact moment rock music remembered who and what it was supposed to be. It was loud, sweaty, dusty, unforgettable, undeniable and we’re so sad it’s over.
First things first … the weather. Sometimes at Download you have to prepare like you’re heading into the trenches. Waterproofs, spare socks, enough layers to survive an Arctic expedition. But this year we were blessed with blue skies, scorching temperatures and sunshine pouring over Donington Park like the gods themselves had finally decided rock fans had suffered enough. In fact, calling it warm would be doing it a disservice. It was absolutely baking and even seasoned Download veterans were scrambling for shade. People smiled all weekend and it had the kind of atmosphere where strangers become drinking buddies in twenty seconds flat. Even the Ferris Wheel seemed to be enjoying itself a little too much. Following reports of an amorous couple allegedly getting rather cosy on the wheel over the weekend, you couldn’t help but glance up and wonder whether some punters were treating it as less of a ride and more of a chance to join the half mile high club.
Friday
And what a soundtrack we had. Friday began in absolute chaos courtesy of Silly Goose. Every festival needs danger and bands that feel like they might accidentally start a riot. Silly Goose brought exactly that thrilling, unpredictable energy. Creeper, meanwhile, continued their steady march toward inevitable greatness as they played two home-run sets on two different days and on two different stages. Mark our words: one day Creeper will headline Download Festival. They have the songs, the vision, the theatrical ambition and, most importantly, the connection with the audience.
And honestly, there ain’t no party without Electric Callboy and that should probably be carved somewhere onto the hallowed turf at Donington. Every single Electric Callboy performance feels like a fever dream fuelled by breakdowns, Eurodance and the best of German nightclubs in the 90’s. The crowd reaction mirrored the energy from the Apex Stage and they are, for us, a headliner coming soon. Feeder also deserve a special mention. For anyone of a certain age, their set was a glorious reminder of just how many absolute bangers they possess. It felt like someone had briefly opened a musical portal back to the late nineties, but there was nothing tired or nostalgic about it. The songs still uppercutted us in the feels, the hooks landed and lingered and Donington sang every word back at them. Cypress Hill brought an entirely different kind of energy but somehow fit Download perfectly. Thick basslines, smoky atmosphere and that effortless cool turned Donington into one giant West Coast block party. Watching thousands of metalheads bouncing along to Insane in the Brain was one of those glorious festival moments that only Download can really deliver.
Halestorm similarly reminded everyone why Lzzy Hale remains absolute royalty. Power, charisma, pipes from another planet and as expected she absolutely owned the place from start to finish.
Then there was Limp Bizkit. Fred Durst has somehow transformed from turn-of-the-century act people would scoff at to a band who have earned every bit of their headliner status. Limp Bizkit at Download was pure mayhem in the best possible sense. Bodies bouncing everywhere, middle-aged mum’s and dad’s rediscovering the inner nu-metaller they thought adulthood had beaten out of them for a set which was almost crowd karaoke with every song roared back – thanks in no small part to the lyrics on the big screen behind the band. When Break Stuff hit, the place went off. (EM)
But there were even more musical delights during the day for us to enjoy.
There are bands that bring a certain kind of crowd with them, and then there are Paleface Swiss. The Opus Stage on Friday was heaving, and a significant portion of the audience appeared to have come in fancy dress — Cookie Monster and Elmo visible somewhere in the middle of what was already threatening to become a very disorderly afternoon. It set the tone for everything that followed. Marc “Zelli” Zellweger is the kind of front man who treats a festival stage like a problem to be solved by sheer force of will. From the opening moments he’s everywhere — the physicality is constant, the energy borders on feral, and the crowd in front of him responds in kind. Paleface Swiss occupy a space where deathcore meets something considerably more chaotic, and live that combination lands with a weight that a bigger stage only amplifies.
Yannick Lehmann and Tommy-Lee Abt take up either side of Zellweger with a tightness that keeps the set anchored even when the front rows look like they’re actively trying to dismantle themselves. The pyros flanking the stage fire up early and don’t let up, the floral backdrop behind the kit providing an odd but effective contrast to the noise being made in front of it. It shouldn’t work aesthetically. It does. Luigi Paraventi is worth noting separately. Stepping into the drummer’s seat following the departure of longtime member Cassiano “Cassi” Toma earlier this year, Paraventi drives the set with a confidence that suggests the transition has cost Paleface Swiss very little. If there’s any adjustment period happening, it isn’t visible from the front.
By the midpoint of the set the crowd has fully committed. The fancy dress contingent — Cookie Monster included — are somewhere in the thick of a pit that’s grown considerably since the first song. Crowd surfers are coming over the barrier in steady rotation. Zellweger conducts it all with the enthusiasm of someone who expected exactly this and planned accordingly. Paleface Swiss on the Opus Stage on Friday afternoon was the kind of set that Download does well — loud, chaotic, and considerably more fun than it had any right to be.
There’s a particular kind of chaos that only Santa Cruz hardcore can produce, and Drain brought every bit of it to the Avalanche Stage on Friday.
Before most of the crowd had even settled, Sammy Ciaramitaro was off the stage. Within the opening moments of Feel the Pressure he’d dropped down into the crowd, scaled the security barrier and was performing from the top of it, handing the mic to fans who screamed lyrics back at him while security looked on with the reluctant expression of people who knew this was going to happen and hadn’t quite prepared for how quickly. When they eventually got him back to the stage, the tent was already at full tilt.
It set the tone for everything that followed. Drain are not a band that operates with any meaningful distance between themselves and their audience, and in a pretty full tent at Download that energy ricochets. Circle pits opened up early and didn’t really close. Crowd surfers came in a near-constant stream. Ciaramitaro spent the rest of the set conducting it all from the stage with the kind of restless intensity that makes you wonder how he’s still standing by the end. Cody Chavez and Tim Flegal hold everything together underneath the chaos, the rhythm section keeping the set anchored even when everything in front of the stage suggests it’s about to collapse into itself. Stealing Happiness From Tomorrow and FTS (KYS) give the pit fresh reason to exist, and Who’s Having Fun? and Nights Like These keep the tempo exactly where Drain want it — uncomfortably fast.
The Descendents cover, Good Good Things, lands well. It makes sense in context — Drain wear their punk influences openly, and dropping a Descendents song into a Download set feels less like a crowd-pleasing detour and more like a statement of intent. The tent responds accordingly. Intermission and California Cursed close the set out back to back, the final two songs hitting as hard as anything that came before them. By the end, the Avalanche Stage looks like the aftermath of something that got slightly out of hand, which is exactly what a Drain set should look like. They’re a band built for moments like this — scrappy, direct, and completely uninterested in the kind of polish that keeps a front man safely on stage. Download gave them a tent. They treated it like a yard show that happened to have a lighting rig.
Sleep Theory aren’t a band that needs a long runway. From the moment Cullen Moore took to the Avalanche Stage on Friday, it was clear this wasn’t going to be a set that eased anyone in gently. The tent was packed, and the crowd in front of the barrier looked like they’d been waiting. Fallout opens things up and the response is immediate — hands up, voices out, the kind of reaction that tells you a significant portion of this crowd knows exactly what they’re here for. Moore is a commanding presence from the off, working the stage with the confidence of someone who’s done this long enough to know how to hold a room and isn’t remotely interested in wasting the opportunity.
Just a Mistake and Stuck in My Head keep the momentum building, the band tight behind Moore as the set finds its footing. Paolo Vergara, Ben Pruitt and Daniel Pruitt provide a solid foundation throughout, the kind of rhythm section and guitar work that lets a front man operate freely without the whole thing threatening to come apart at the seams. The production is clean without being excessive — smoke, sharp lighting cutting through in red and white, a galaxy-themed backdrop behind the kit that gives the stage a visual identity without trying too hard. It suits the band. Sleep Theory are a group whose music sits in the more atmospheric end of the rock spectrum, and the staging reflects that without tipping into self-importance.
Gravity and Numb land well in the middle of the set, both drawing strong reactions from a crowd that clearly has the lyrics committed to memory. Moore keeps the interaction going between songs, keeping the tent engaged in the gaps rather than letting momentum slip. By the time Words Are Worthless and Static close things out, the Avalanche Stage feels like it’s been put to good use. Sleep Theory are a band still building toward something, and a packed Friday tent at Download is exactly the kind of platform that pushes that trajectory along. Moore and the rest of the band took the slot seriously and delivered accordingly. (AH)
Saturday
Saturday opened brutally with Drowning Pool reminding everyone exactly why early-2000s metal hit so hard in the first place. No frills. No nonsense. Just huge riffs and pure testosterone-fuelled catharsis booming across Donington.
Return To Dust were another revelation. Like a new generation of Alice In Chains. Packing massive riffs, enormous grooves and that glorious nineties-inspired heaviness. South Arcade were another standout. Brimming with confidence, massive hooks and enough energy to power half the East Midlands. They looked every inch a band destined for much bigger stages in the years ahead and won over plenty of new fans in the process.
Bush delivered a glorious wave of nineties nostalgia. Gavin Rossdale somehow still looks absurdly cool, which frankly feels unfair on the rest of us. Hearing Machinehead and Everything Zen booming across Donington transported everyone of a certain age straight back to sticky-floored rock clubs and our teenage years. Babymetal once again proved they exist entirely outside normal musical logic. Metal shouldn’t collide with J-pop this perfectly, and yet there they stood, commanding one of the biggest crowds of the weekend – and they defied tradition by playing in the sunshine after several appearances dogged by Donington downpours.
Landmvrks were also exceptional. Crushingly heavy while remaining effortlessly melodic, they generated some of the most energetic pits we saw all weekend and looked completely at home on a festival of this scale. A band whose stock continues to rise with every passing year.
One thing Download absolutely got right this year was the new site layout. The changes worked brilliantly. The festival felt more open and in the main, navigation around the site was easier. Avalanche has much more room in its new location and benefitted enormously from the extra space. It felt less cramped, more comfortable and better suited to the crowds it attracts. The only caveat is that the second stage now feels like a victim of its own success. The crowds it pulls are absolutely enormous and there were several occasions throughout the weekend where it felt uncomfortably congested. At times it bordered on unsafe. Download may need to seriously consider whether the stage has outgrown its current location because the audience demand clearly exceeds the available space.
The biggest talking point before the weekend was, inevitably, Guns N’ Roses. We all heard the grumbling beforehand that Axl’s voice was gone, nobody cares, too long a set. Same old internet bandwagon from people, usually sheep leaping onto the latest bandwagon pile-on, who’d probably already decided to hate it before stepping through the gates. What happened instead was one of our favourite headline performances we have ever witnessed. Not ‘better than expected’, it was an ass kicking set where Axl Rose stormed that stage like a man possessed, snarling, screeching, commanding the crowd with his undeniable charisma. Slash looked as impossibly cool as ever, peeling off solos that sounded less played than conjured from some dark bourbon-soaked magic. Duff McKagan held the whole glorious machine together with effortless swagger.
And the songs were like the worlds best rock jukebox. Welcome To The Jungle, Estranged, Rocket Queen, November Rain, Nightrain, Paradise City. Banger after banger after banger. Guns N’ Roses were genuinely colossal and the biggest compliment of all is that the three hours passed for us as if it were a half-hour set. As the encore rang out, we wanted more. It wasn’t nostalgia. That’s the best thing and their set felt alive, current and unforgettable. (EM)
We also managed to check out a number of other acts during our day.
We Came As Romans have carried a weight since 2018 that most bands never have to. The loss of Kyle Pavone could have ended them. Instead, Saturday on the Opus Stage at Download felt like a band that has found a way to keep going without pretending the road here was straightforward. Dave Stephens opens the set and it’s immediately clear this is a crowd that came specifically for this. A large capacity turnout in the open air of the Opus Stage, arms up from the first song. culture wound sets the tone — Stephens is physical and committed from the off, the kind of front man who looks like he means every word rather than performing the act of meaning them.
The production is stripped back by Download standards. No pyros, no elaborate staging. What fills the space instead is the sheer volume of crowd response. Cold Like War draws one of the bigger reactions of the set, the chorus carrying well across an open stage with a crowd that knows it well enough to take over. Darkbloom follows and sustains that momentum, Joshua Moore and Lou Cotton taking point either side of Stephens while David Puckett drives everything forward from behind the kit with a precision that keeps the set feeling tight even at its most expansive moments.
There’s a directness to how We Came As Romans operate live that suits the outdoor setting. Without a tent to contain it, the energy has to travel further, and it does. Where did you go? lands with the kind of quiet weight the song carries on record, the crowd holding it carefully before Daggers closes things out on a harder edge. Seven years on from losing Pavone, this is a band that has worked out what it means to still be here. The Opus Stage on Saturday didn’t feel like a band surviving. It felt like one that has earned the right to keep going, and knows it.
Behemoth don’t do understated. Walking out onto the Opus Stage on Saturday, Adam “Nergal” Darski and the rest of the band looked less like a metal act taking a festival slot and more like something that had crawled out of a particularly vivid nightmare. Full corpse paint, elaborate costuming, and a stage rigged with enough pyrotechnics to make the Download site feel several degrees warmer. Before a single note had been played, they’d already made their point.
Ora Pro Nobis Lucifer opens the set and the flames go up immediately, pillars of fire framing the stage as the song builds from its ceremonial intro into something considerably less holy. A packed Opus Stage receives it accordingly. Zbigniew “Inferno” Promi?ski drives the rhythm with the kind of precision that makes black metal feel surgical rather than chaotic, while Patryk “Seth” Sztyber and Tomasz “Orion” Wróblewski lock in either side of Darski with a solidity that gives the theatrics something real to lean on.
Blow Your Trumpets Gabriel and Bartzabel push the set deeper into Behemoth’s more earlier catalogue, both landing with a weight that justifies the production around them. The pyros aren’t decoration — they’re punctuation, timed to the music in a way that makes each detonation feel like part of the arrangement rather than a separate spectacle bolted on for effect. The Bathory cover, The Return of Darkness and Evil, is a moment worth pausing on. It’s a bold choice for a festival set, and the crowd’s response suggests it was the right one. There’s a reverence to how Behemoth play it that makes clear this isn’t a throwaway inclusion — it’s a band paying genuine dues to something that shaped them, and the Opus Stage feels it.
Chant for Eschaton 2000 closes the set, and by the end Darski is standing in the kind of post-apocalyptic tableau that most bands would need a much bigger budget to pull off. The smoke, the flames, the paint — all of it still intact, all of it still working. Behemoth have been doing this long enough that the theatrics could easily feel routine. At Download on Saturday they didn’t. The production was immaculate, the performance was committed, and the packed crowd in front of the Opus Stage got exactly what they came for.
Architects headlining the Opus Stage on Saturday was never going to be a quiet affair. The crowd that packed in front of the stage made that clear before a note had been played — dense, loud, and carrying the kind of energy that makes security teams visibly recalibrate their afternoon.
Sam Carter opened with Elegy and the response was immediate, the full LED backdrop shifting behind the band as the sound hit the field. The production is substantial — vivid visuals changing song to song, lighting that gives the Opus Stage the feel of something considerably larger than its billing might suggest. Dan Searle, Alex Dean and Adam Christianson lock in with the precision that Architects have built their reputation on, and live that tightness translates into something genuinely formidable.
Whiplash and Doomsday followed in quick succession, the latter carrying particular weight. Carter dedicated it to former member Tom Searle, and the field held it accordingly. There are songs that exist beyond their studio versions in the context of live performance, and this is one of them — the crowd carrying the song as much as the band, a moment that sat apart from everything else in the set.
Then the set stopped. Blackhole had to be restarted multiple times due to the crowd becoming too volatile, and Impermanence followed with the same problem. On the third interruption Searle came down from behind the kit to centre stage to address the crowd directly, asking them to pull back enough that the set could continue rather than be cut short by festival security. It’s a measure of how invested the audience was that they listened, and a measure of how well the band handled it that the momentum barely broke.
Florent Salfati of Landmvrks joined for Brain Dead, adding a rawness the song suits and giving the crowd a moment they clearly weren’t expecting. Seeing Red and Animals drove the back end of the set home, closing things out on terms that justified every minute of the preceding chaos. Architects on the Opus Stage on Saturday was a set that tested the limits of what a festival crowd can handle and landed on the right side of that line — just about.
Sunday
The third and final day started with Ivari, who brought an atmospheric intensity that felt like the perfect slow-burning beginning to the final day. The Pretty Wild injected pure attitude and swagger into the afternoon. One of those performances where you could feel a band winning over new fans song by song.
Bloodywood were simply explosive. Folk instrumentation, crushing metal riffs and unstoppable energy colliding into something uniquely theirs. One of the most joyous pits of the entire weekend erupted during their set. The Pretty Reckless were sensational. Taylor Momsen has evolved into one of the great modern rock frontpeople, all commanding presence and smoky menace.
Then came one of our personal highlights: Social Distortion. A bucket-list band for us. One we’d somehow never managed to see all these years. Mike Ness carries himself with the battered dignity of a man who has truly lived every word he sings. No polish. Just honesty, heartbreak and punk rock soul. Watching them at Donington was one of those moments we music fans live for. Watching them was like being a teenager again. And hearing Reach For The Sky brought us back to the younger, punkier version of ourselves who we were delighted to meet again after so many years of the 9-5 grind and being a grown up.
Ice Nine Kills brought all the theatre, horror and metal fused into one beautifully into a beautifully bonkers set directed by a slasher villain. Perfect Download material and they will continue their rise up the bill with every appearance.
The only sour note had absolutely nothing to do with the band themselves. By the time Ice Nine Kills took the stage we’d gradually worked our way to around eight rows from the front. Yet directly ahead of us sat a line of camping chairs, many of them empty because the people who had been using them were now standing for parts of the set anyway. This has become an increasingly frustrating issue at Download and, more importantly, an increasingly dangerous one. People trip over them. Crowds surge unexpectedly. Visibility is reduced. In packed environments they become hazards that simply don’t need to exist. Camping chairs absolutely have their place at Download and there are attendees who genuinely need them. But they should be positioned further back from the front of stages. Other festivals have implemented clear marker systems beyond which chairs are not permitted and Download really needs to look at doing the same. We’ve watched this issue get progressively worse over the years, but 2026 was comfortably the worst we’ve ever experienced. It feels like an accident waiting to happen and it’s one of the few areas where the festival urgently needs to act.
Scooter, meanwhile, turned Download into the greatest illegal rave Donington has ever seen. What a curveball booking that was and we gotta say, hand on heart, what a triumph. We weren’t 100 percent sure pre-festival about it all but the tent was absolutely rammed with people packed in like sardines, drenched in sweat and grinning like lunatics for some relentless techno insanity with more than a dollop of metal. And we imagine we might get one curveball booking now every year which we’re all for as Download taking risks like that is exactly why this festival has become the giant it is today.
And speaking of emotional moments, Linkin Park delivered one of the weekend’s most powerful sets. There was naturally enormous curiosity surrounding this new era of the band and they absolutely rose to the occasion. The songs still carry that emotional weight and hearing tens of thousands roar those choruses into the summer sky felt genuinely cathartic. It was also a history-making moment with Emily Armstrong stepping out onto the main stage as the first woman to ever headline Download in its 23-year history. This matters and while Emily might be first, she won’t be last, with the likes of Lzzy Hale, Spiritbox and Evanescence waiting in the wings. (EM)
We made sure to make the most of our time at Download, with some other notable artists for us also deserving a mention!
Eleven in the morning on a Sunday at Download is not a slot that rewards the faint-hearted. The Dogtooth Stage was barely warmed up, a fair portion of the festival site was still horizontal, and Spitting Glass were about to make absolutely everyone aware of their existence. The crowd that gathered was respectable for the hour — a solid turnout of people who had either done their research or simply followed the noise. By the time Joe Badolato had finished announcing the band’s intentions, the pits had already opened up. For a group this early into their existence as a live act, the energy on stage was striking. There was nothing tentative about it.
Badolato commands the stage in a way that makes sense given his background, but Spitting Glass don’t feel like a side project coasting on familiar names. David Ball, Chris Keepin, Reuben Bescoby and Danny Yates play with a collective purpose that suggests a band who have taken the project seriously from the ground up. The sound is dense and uncompromising, and the Dogtooth Stage carries it well — red lighting cutting through the smoke, the band framed against a simple but effective backdrop that keeps the focus on what’s happening in front of it.
The pits that open up are genuinely impressive for an 11am set. Download crowds have a particular capacity for showing up and immediately causing problems in a pit regardless of the time, and Spitting Glass drew out that instinct early. By the midpoint of the set the front section had fully committed, and the energy coming off the stage was feeding directly back into it. With only two released tracks to their name, Spitting Glass are still a somewhat unknown quantity on record. Live, the picture is considerably clearer. This is a band that knows how to occupy a stage, how to hold a crowd that has every reason to be somewhere horizontal, and how to make a Sunday morning feel considerably more dangerous than it has any right to be. As opening slots go, it was a statement.
There’s no point pretending the elephant isn’t in the room. A significant portion of the crowd that filled the Opus Stage on Sunday were there because Keanu Reeves plays bass in this band. That’s just a fact. What’s equally a fact is that by the end of the set, it didn’t matter particularly why anyone had shown up.
Dogstar are not a new band — formed in the early ’90s, this is a group with history and a catalogue that predates most of the acts playing Download this weekend. Bret Domrose, Robert Mailhouse and Reeves took to a stage dominated by a bold red backdrop bearing the band name in block lettering, and from the first song made clear that the music was going to do the talking.
Domrose’s vocals are the anchor. Crisp, controlled, and sitting exactly where they do on record — which at an outdoor festival stage is not something to take for granted. The alternative rock the trio play is melodic without being soft, built on Mailhouse’s steady drumming and a rhythm section that gives everything a solidity the songs need. Reeves plays his role without showboating, locked in at the back of the stage in a way that suggests a man more interested in the music than the spectacle of his own presence in it. The production is deliberately stripped back. No pyros, no elaborate staging — just the band, the backdrop, and the songs. It suits them. Dogstar aren’t trying to compete with the heavier acts on the bill, and they don’t need to. The Opus Stage crowd, whatever their initial reason for being there, stayed and listened.
The energy is measured rather than frenetic, which for a Sunday afternoon at a festival that has spent three days putting its audience through considerable physical punishment, is probably exactly right. The set doesn’t demand anything from the crowd that the crowd can’t give at this point in the weekend. It just sounds good, which turns out to be enough. Dogstar released their fourth album All In Now earlier this year, and the Download set felt like a band comfortable with where they are. The novelty angle writes itself. The music doesn’t need it.
Plenty of things happen at Download that you don’t see coming. A wheelchair user crowd surfing their way across the Opus Stage field on a Sunday afternoon is one of them. The crowd that lifted them and passed them forward did so with the same enthusiasm they’d given everything else The Plot in You had thrown at them, which by that point was considerable.
Landon Tewers opened with Divide, the LED backdrop displaying the song lyrics in bold block lettering as the Opus Stage filled to a size that made the slot feel well earned. The production is clean and purposeful — visuals that change with each song, lighting that shifts the mood without overpowering what’s happening on stage. Josh Childress, Ethan Yoder and Michael Cooper back up Tewers with a solidity that gives the more emotionally direct songs room to breathe without losing any of their weight.
You Get One and Forgotten sustain the early momentum before Don’t Look Away pulls the crowd in tighter. Tewers is a compelling front man in the sense that he doesn’t appear to be performing so much as simply existing very loudly in front of a lot of people. The interactions between songs are genuine rather than scripted, and the crowd responds to that in kind — a field this size singing back lyrics with that level of sincerity says something about how well the songs translate outside of headphones. Spare Me and Silence carry the set through its middle stretch before Left Behind gives the crowd one of its most sustained responses of the afternoon. Crowd surfers had been coming over the barrier throughout, but the back end of the set brought them in waves. By FEEL NOTHING, the barrier team had fully earned their Sunday.
The Plot in You playing the Opus Stage on Sunday felt like the right band in the right place at the right time. The songs hold up at festival volume, Tewers holds the crowd without making it look like work, and somewhere out in that field a wheelchair user crowd surfed their way into the weekend’s best unscripted moment. (AH)
There were plenty of great things about this year’s Download, but perhaps what truly elevated Download 2026 beyond mere great festival territory was the feeling running through the entire weekend. There was also something wonderfully balanced about the entire weekend. Legacy bands justified their reputations while younger bands seized their opportunities with both hands. Established big hitters delivered and emerging artists announced themselves. The future of rock is exciting, thriving and it is so exciting to be a small part of it. Sixteen Downloads since 2006 but we reckon this one stands above them all. The festival king. And long may it reign. (EM)
Written By: Eric Mackinnon and Anthony Hunt
Photo Gallery by Anthony Hunt and featuring Headwreck, Slay Squad, Paleface Swiss, Lakeview, Drain, Lake Malice, Sleep Theory, Story Of The Year, Halestorm, Passion Flower, Tropic Gold, Landmvrks, We Came As Romans, Bush, Behemoth, Architects, Spitting Glass, Kublai Klan TX, Dogstar, Thrown, The Plot In You, Ankor.
