Fontaines D. C. headlined Reading Festival 2026 last night – check out all the highlights below.
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The band made their debut as headliners on the festival’s main stage – now known as The Grid – last night (August 28), and will play again tonight in Leeds. Closing out the first night of the festival, they followed a set from co-headliner Charli XCX.
Fans had to wait about half an hour for their set to start due to a delay thought to be caused by tech issues, which reportedly led the band to cut three songs – and reportedly another never-played-before new one – from the original setlist.
After a late start, they stormed through ‘Boys in the Better Land’, ‘Here’s the Thing’, ‘Nabokov’ and ‘Marianne’ – the latter a recently debuted new track. Addressing the crowd after ‘Big Shot’, frontman Grian Chatten told fans: “It’s been a very hard time for us the last couple of months, and it’s nice to be back here”.
Their headline slot comes after the death of their manager Trevor Dietz, who they described as “the sixth member of the band”. Their first performance since his passing was at the BBC’s final live session at Maida Vale, in an equally emotive performance earlier this month.
Bassist Conor Deegan explained that the track had initially been discarded from the new album until the late Dietz told them they were “absolute lunatics” for leaving it out, and the song has now been dedicated to him.
It got its first outing at Spain’s Baluarte de la Candelaria, where they also played another new song in ‘Six Shot Morning’, which appeared later in their Reading set.
They closed out the set with the Grammy-nominated ‘Starbuster’ from their fourth album, ‘Romance‘, which they’re set to follow up with ‘Dopamine Chamber‘ in October.
Check back at NME for a full review.
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Friday night’s headline came just a few days after the Irish group announced details of their fifth album. Discussing the concept behind the new record, Chatten has said: “The album itself is a dopamine chamber.
You step inside and we test these different mind or mood-altering pieces of music on you.”.
Speaking to NME earlier this year, guitarist Carlos O’Connell said he liked the idea of making their Reading & Leeds setlist “maybe a bit more ‘Dogrel’-heavy”, but added that “anything could happen now – literally anything.”.
NME gave their set four-and-a-half stars, with Andrew Trendell writing: “These are anthems from the seedy underbelly of modernity, but they still don’t half slap.
The cinematic new single ‘Marianne’ proves a hypnotic hit before ‘Jackie Down The Line’ makes the darkest sing-along of the day so far, but the first of many. Who can resist the fields of Reading hollering back “shit, shit, shit, BATTERED” on ‘Death Kink’.
Also headlining the 2026 festival are Florence + The Machine, RAYE and Chase & Status, and other names on the line-up include Skepta, Sombr, Role Model, JADE, Kneecap, Geese, Skye Newman, Holly Humberstone, Gurriers, Westside Cowboy, Declan McKenna, Maisie Peters, Paris Paloma, Overpass and Duke Dumont.
Check back at NME here for the latest news, reviews, photos, interviews and much more from Reading & Leeds 2026.
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