Kendal Calling Festival 2026, Lowther Deer Park - Day Two - Friday 31st July

Secret identities, indie anthems, disco delirium and a gloriously unhinged woodland finale — Friday sends Kendal Calling into overdrive.

Words and Photography - John Hayhurst

Thursday may have begun with the gruelling haul into The Shire, but it ended with The Kooks turning ‘Naïve’ into the first enormous communal singalong of the weekend.

Between Vacant Weekend’s sunlit grooves, Vanessa Carlton’s piano-led nostalgia, Brasswürst’s beer-hall chaos, The Cribs’ ragged guitars and Lloyd Cole’s intimate appearance at Tim Peaks Diner, Kendal Calling’s supposed warm-up night felt more like a festival in full flight.

Friday morning brings the inevitable consequences. The campsite awakens slowly beneath the Cumbrian sky: tent zips open, camping stoves splutter into life and tired heads attempt to reconstruct the previous evening. Any lingering fatigue soon begins to lift, however, because this is the first full day at Lowther Deer Park—and Kendal Calling is ready to get serious.

Rianne Downey provides a beautifully measured start on the Main Stage. The Scottish singer-songwriter’s country and folk influences drift naturally across the field, her voice possessing the clarity to quiet even those still discussing last night over breakfast beers. ‘Lost in Blue’, ‘Good in Goodbye’ and ‘The Song of Old Glencoe’ bring tenderness without losing their festival-sized pull, marking Downey out as one of the weekend’s most compelling early performers.

Black Honey arrive with considerably sharper claws. Led by the magnetic Izzy B. Phillips, the Brighton band blend cinematic glamour, grunge-heavy guitars and pop hooks that hit with immediate force. ‘I Like the Way You Die’ and ‘Corrine’ provide the swagger, while ‘Heavy’ and ‘Run for Cover’ should give the Main Stage its first proper blast of Friday-afternoon rebellion.

From there, attention turns towards Calling Out and Dublin four-piece Brooki. Frontwoman Sarah Brookfield is joined by guitarist Dara Gooney, bassist Jake Brennan and drummer Anna Kelly, creating a sound that moves from intimate restraint to explosive, grunge-heavy intensity. The emotionally charged ‘Amber’ provides a likely standout, while live favourites such as ‘Apple’ and ‘16’ showcase a band whose atmospheric guitars and raw, soaring vocals have drawn comparisons with PJ Harvey, Jeff Buckley and Wunderhorse.

Then comes one of Kendal Calling’s least convincing disguises.

Parklands welcomes The Kokos, a mysterious new group who just happen to look, sound and behave remarkably like Lottery Winners. The joke lasts for approximately as long as it takes frontman Thom Rylance to open his mouth. Alongside Katie Lloyd, Rob Lally and Joe Singleton, he turns the not-so-secret appearance into a gleeful celebration of one of Kendal Calling’s favourite bands.

The pseudonym does little to hide the group’s arsenal of huge-hearted pop-rock songs. ‘Start Again’, ‘Much Better’ and ‘Superpower’ are built for crowds to throw themselves into, while Rylance’s rapid-fire humour makes the gaps between songs almost as entertaining as the music itself. Secret set or not, Lottery Winners rarely arrive quietly—and under any name, they know exactly how to win over this festival.

Back on the Main Stage, The Vaccines deliver indie rock with the unnecessary parts stripped away. Frontman Justin Young leads a set packed with compact, high-impact songs, each one seemingly engineered to trigger a reaction within its opening seconds. ‘Wetsuit’ offers the arms-around-shoulders moment, while ‘Post Break-Up Sex’, ‘If You Wanna’ and ‘Teenage Icon’ send the field bouncing.

Hard-Fi stride onto the Main Stage beneath glorious Cumbrian sunshine, with Richard Archer immediately bringing the swagger of a band who know exactly how many festival anthems they have at their disposal. ‘Middle Eastern Holiday’ and ‘Cash Machine’ sound as urgent as ever, their tales of frustration and everyday survival bouncing across a field filled with raised drinks and sun-soaked faces.

The unmistakable opening of ‘Hard to Beat’ transforms the crowd into an open-air indie dance floor, before ‘Living for the Weekend’ provides the perfect soundtrack to thousands of people doing precisely that. Hard-Fi may have emerged from the concrete surroundings of Staines, but in the Lowther Deer Park sunshine, their sharp-edged urban anthems feel completely at home.

If The Vaccines and Hard Fi bring the guitars, Scissor Sisters arrive carrying absolutely everything else. Colour, camp, disco, sleaze and theatrical excess explode across the Main Stage as Jake Shears leads a set seemingly designed to make standing still impossible. With Babydaddy and Del Marquis helping drive the band’s unmistakable mix of pop, rock and nightclub glamour, the performance becomes one of Friday’s most joyously over-the-top spectacles and the only question on everyone's lips is 'Why were they not the headliners?'.

They open with 'I Don't Feel Like Dancin' followed by 'Laura' with Shears completely in charge strutting down the wide stage wearing an oversized hat and stripey overalls. ‘I Can’t Decide’ is wickedly playful, ‘Take Your Mama’ becomes a colossal open-air euphoric chorus. ‘Filthy/Gorgeous’ pushes the field into full disco delirium, everyone is dancing - they are the perfect festival band.

Inside the beautifully decorated Parklands tent, Ash deliver the kind of fast, melodic guitar rush that has kept them at the heart of alternative rock for more than three decades. Tim Wheeler leads the Northern Irish trio through ‘A Life Less Ordinary’ and ‘Goldfinger’, while Mark Hamilton’s bass and Rick McMurray’s drums give every hook an extra physical punch in the tightly packed space.

‘Shining Light’ inspires the inevitable arms-around-shoulders moment, and ‘Girl From Mars’ sends Parklands into full nostalgic euphoria. Yet Ash never feel like a band simply revisiting past victories: the songs remain loud, youthful and brilliantly immediate. Surrounded by the tent’s intricate decoration and a crowd pressed towards the stage, their set feels like an intimate greatest-hits show.

Back among the trees, Dea Matrona bring rock ’n’ roll swagger to Woodlands. Belfast duo Orláith Forsythe and Mollie McGinn swap instruments and vocals with easy chemistry, pulling from classic rock without sounding trapped inside it. ‘Red Button’, ‘Stuck on You’ and ‘So Damn Dangerous’ carry grit and groove, while material from Hate That I Care adds a fresh edge to their rapidly expanding catalogue.

Their set feels both polished and spontaneous—the sound of two musicians completely at ease with each other but still hungry enough to make every song land. In the close confines of Woodlands, those riffs hit even harder.

Two Door Cinema Club return the night to the Main Stage for Friday’s headline set, bringing a catalogue capable of turning Lowther Deer Park into an enormous indie dance floor. Alex Trimble’s distinctive vocals sit above Kevin Baird’s bass and Sam Halliday’s bright, interlocking guitar lines as the Northern Irish trio set off a chain reaction across the crowd.

‘Undercover Martyn’ barely pauses for breath, ‘I Can Talk’ arrives with all its twitchy urgency intact and ‘Something Good Can Work’ triggers some mass bouncing that looks magnificent from a distance and probably slightly alarming from within.

As ‘What You Know’ rings out beneath the lights, Friday reaches its obvious emotional peak. Its opening guitar line is enough to send arms into the air before Trimble has sung a word, closing the Main Stage with one of the weekend’s defining communal moments.

The Moonlandingz take over Woodlands and immediately drag Friday into far stranger territory. Fronted by Lias Kaci Saoudi, with the warped creative force of Saul Adamczewski, Adrian Flanagan and Dean Honer behind him, the band exist somewhere between glam rock, psychedelic electronics and the last nightclub left open at the end of the universe. If you want thumping electrobeats with incomprehensible shouting and a bass player that looks like he just stepped out of The Village People, then this is the place for you. Lias looked remarkably average, I've seen him clingfilm toilet rolls to his chest before, here he was wearing an orangey red v-neck sweater, looking normal was exceedingly abnormal for him and no sign of Jeanie White either.

Two Door Cinema Club delivered the polished, hit-packed performance expected of a Friday-night headliner, but it was difficult to escape the feeling that Scissor Sisters would have been the stronger choice to close the Main Stage. Their set possessed the greater sense of spectacle: flamboyant, unpredictable and driven by Jake Shears’ magnetic showmanship. Following their explosion of energy was always going to be a difficult task.

Looking Ahead to Saturday it begins with Swim School bringing their shimmering but hard-edged alternative sound to the Main Stage, before Bleech 9:3 take over Calling Out with the kind of live intensity that could make them one of the weekend’s breakthrough discoveries.

Biffy Clyro will headline the Main Stage with arena-sized riffs, unpredictable time signatures and enough anthems to shake the surrounding hills. At exactly the wrong moment, KEO will be closing Calling Out, offering the chance to witness one of Britain’s most exciting rising guitar bands in a far more intimate space.

The clash of the weekend for me. Do you choose the established festival giants or the band that could become one? Biffy or KEO? I need sleep before making this decision.