eading and Leeds festival will probably always be a post-GCSE rite of passage: a gleefully riotous taste of freedom before having to make actual life decisions. But the sibling events have been struggling for a sense of identity beyond this, particularly post-Covid. In 2025, the festival decided to theme days based on genre, which felt out of touch – but, this year, organisers have decided to tackle gen Z's borderless approach head on. There are new stages, such as the chandelier-adorned Ballroom, and overall the lineup is wonderfully mazy.
On the festival's second stage, you can catch everything from UK rap and garage selector DJ EJ, warbly US rockers Geese, and raw, live-drummed jungle from 4am Kru. "I dedicate this one to all the bad bitches from small places. Let's make a song about the bad bitches from Leeds," Slovakian pop star Adéla gleefully giggles during her own set here, before launching into neon-streaked megahit Ain't in LA. In a ping-ponging journey across styles, other highlights include London singer Dexter in the Newsagent's blue-skied bedroom pop, Australian artist Mall Grab's Game Boy grime beats and Bar Italia's insouciant rock, which is significantly more fun and dance-y than their recent lukewarm album reviews might suggest.
Thursday is headlined by a tired-sounding Kasabian, who don't move a crowd of kids that, for good reason, would much rather be at LS23, the trippy dance stage in the woods. Chase and Status' festival-sized drum'n'bass scratches that dance itch as Friday's main stage headliner, while Charli xcx (reviewed in full here) and Fontaines DC are a spellbinding double bill on Saturday. The latter play new material from their forthcoming album Dopamine Chamber, including beguiling single Marianne, and an unreleased new track called Happy for You – it's driven by a Sundays-sounding guitar line and a peppy rimshot, but moves with melancholy, the band members' features obscured against a humming green light onstage. Their set is the best from a guitar band all weekend.
Another new stage, the Canopy, replaces the BBC Introducing stage at both festivals and is a showcase of new artists curated by Festival Republic, who are majority owned by Live Nation – it has been dubbed the "nepo baby" stage for platforming the offspring of Dave Grohl, Liam Gallagher and the Beckhams. For the most part, the programming is disastrously bad, and the stage is underattended until festivalgoers can catch a perfunctory glimpse of someone semi-famous. Then it swarms, making sets look like a that doesn't actually exist from the outside, and to the detriment of other artists who would benefit from not being juxtaposed with celebrities' kids. The two best acts are young alt-rock four-piece Tooth and brilliantly talented singer Sade Olutola, and yet they only get 20-minute opening slots on the Saturday and Sunday.
If Reading and Leeds can be defined by anything this past year, it is young people's ongoing affinity for tech house DJs like Josh Baker, Omar+, Max Dean and Luke Dean; Irish producer Kettama's set is one of the most packed-out of the weekend. These artists play perfectly engineered going-out music, with chantable vocal samples and mixes that build and change a little too fast, like doomscrolling in audio form.
The dance music is mainly on the Warehouse stage, which is not unlike a mockup of Manchester's Warehouse Project, and is where the most crowd energy is directed across the weekend. Issues with overcrowding mean that Silva Bumpa and a Skepta b2b with Prospa are cancelled, with calls online for Reading and Leeds to recognise the popularity of dance and move it to bigger stages. Baker clashes with Dave on Sunday, and despite cameos from Kano and Central Cee, the Dave crowd is by far the most sparse out of all the headliners.
You can really see Reading and Leeds' transformation at Hedex's set, when the drum'n'bass DJ drops a mix that begins with a sped-up version of Nirvana's Smells Like Teen Spirit. There's a slight bit of confusion at a tune that once embodied this festival. Still, the crowd join in singing the verse, before Hedex pulverises the track to the same effect as the distorted drop in the original and everyone's back to dancing with that same immediacy, that same teenage freedom.