Reading and Leeds festivals have long served as a quintessential post-GCSE rite of passage, offering teenagers a chaotic taste of independence before they face major life decisions. In the years following the pandemic, the twin events struggled to define their identity. While a 2025 attempt to structure days around specific genres felt disconnected from modern listening habits, organizers have pivoted this year to embrace the borderless musical tastes of Gen Z. This shift is reflected in a diverse, maze-like lineup and the introduction of new performance spaces, such as the chandelier-adorned Ballroom.
The festival’s second stage highlights this eclectic approach, hosting a wide range of acts from US rockers Geese and UK underground rap selector DJ EJ to the live-drummed jungle sounds of 4am Kru. During her set, Slovakian pop star Adéla connected with the audience, quipping, “I dedicate this one to all the bad bitches from small places. Let’s make a song about the bad bitches from Leeds,” before performing her hit “Ain’t in LA.” Other standout performances included London’s Dexter in the Newsagent, Australian artist Mall Grab, and the rock band Bar Italia, whose live energy proved more vibrant than recent critical assessments suggested.
Traditional rock headliners faced challenges this year. Kasabian’s Thursday set felt weary, failing to captivate a younger audience that largely migrated to the LS23 stage in the woods for electronic music. On Friday, Chase and Status provided a massive drum’n’bass spectacle on the main stage, while Saturday featured a compelling double bill of Charli xcx and Fontaines DC. The latter showcased new material from their upcoming album, *Dopamine Chamber*, including the single “Marianne” and an unreleased track, “Happy for You.” Their performance stood out as the weekend’s strongest showing by a guitar-based act.
A point of contention was the new Canopy stage, which replaced the BBC Introducing platform. Curated by Festival Republic—a company majority-owned by Live Nation—the stage was dubbed the “nepo baby” stage for featuring the children of celebrities like Dave Grohl, Liam Gallagher, and the Beckhams. The programming was largely criticized as poor and underattended, except when crowds swarmed to catch a glimpse of a famous name. This dynamic often overshadowed more deserving artists, such as alt-rock group Tooth and singer Sade Olutola, who were relegated to brief 20-minute opening slots.
The weekend was ultimately defined by the massive popularity of tech house DJs. Artists like Josh Baker, Omar+, Max Dean, and Luke Dean drew significant interest, with Irish producer Kettama attracting one of the largest crowds of the entire festival. These sets, characterized by rapid-fire mixes and catchy vocal samples, resonated deeply with attendees. The Warehouse stage, designed to evoke Manchester’s Warehouse Project, became the epicenter of this energy. High demand led to the cancellation of sets by Silva Bumpa and a Skepta b2b with East End Dubs due to overcrowding, fueling online calls for the festival to move dance acts to larger stages.
The changing nature of the festival was perhaps best illustrated during Hedex’s drum’n’bass set. When the DJ dropped a sped-up remix of Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” the crowd initially seemed confused by the reimagining of the festival’s former anthem. However, they quickly joined in singing the verses before the track hit a heavy, distorted drop, restoring the same sense of immediate, youthful freedom that has always characterized the event. By Sunday, the shift in priorities was clear: while headliner Dave featured cameos from Kano, Tems, and Central Cee, his crowd was notably thinner than those gathered for the electronic acts. The report also notes that 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. The report also notes that 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, thursday is headlined by a tired-sounding Kasabian. The report also notes that the programming is disastrously bad, and the stage is underattended until festivalgoers can catch a perfunctory glimpse of someone semi-famous, for the most part. The report also notes that making sets look like a moment 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, then it swarms. The report also notes that with chantable vocal samples and mixes that build and change a little too fast, like doomscrolling in audio form, these artists play perfectly engineered going-out music.
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