Kendal Calling Festival 2026, Lowther Deer Park - Final Day - Sunday 2nd August
- John Hayhurst
- Aug 4
- 8 min read
From tents down and chippy teas to Wolf Alice beneath the lights, Kendal Calling saves one final surge of magic for Sunday.
Words and Photography - John Hayhurst
Sunday morning at Kendal Calling begins with the least glamorous headline act of the weekend: packing away the tent.
Sleeping bags are wrestled back into sacks seemingly half their required size, airbeds are deflated and four days of campsite debris are gathered from every corner of The Shire. The tent itself—so carefully assembled on Thursday—is dismantled with far less ceremony, before everything is carried back across the fields and somehow squeezed into the car.
There is a good reason for doing it now. Once Wolf Alice finish tonight, there will be no return to a dark campsite and no final battle with poles, pegs and guy ropes. The car will be waiting for a quick getaway home. The downside is that Sunday can no longer be attacked with quite the same enthusiasm at the bar. If you are driving later, the beer has to take a back seat—responsible, sensible and not necessarily the easiest decision while everyone around you is ordering the first round.
Saturday’s excesses are still fresh in the memory. Bleech 9:3 delivered one of Calling Out’s most emotionally charged performances, Gabrielle filled the Main Stage with timeless choruses and Jamie Webster turned the field into a massed choir. Brògeal and The Twang kept the communal spirit flowing before Biffy Clyro rewarded the decision to miss KEO with a colossal headline set.
With the car loaded and the campsite chapter officially closed, there is only one correct way to begin the final day: The Lancashire Hotpots on the Main Stage.
Their Sunday appearance has become a Kendal Calling tradition, bringing comedy folk, northern pride and an enormous helping of cheerful nonsense to an audience still recovering from Saturday night. Most in the field are enjoying some fancy dress, this years theme - 'Films' or 'At The Movies'. Frontman Bernard Thresher is facing thousands of people dressed as Scooby Doo, Nuns, Star Wars characters and Minions. He conducts the field through songs about the genuinely important issues facing modern Britain: discount shopping, flat-pack furniture, bin collections, dad dancing & beer.
Then comes ‘Chippy Tea’, Kendal’s unofficial Sunday-morning anthem. Thousands of voices celebrate chips, peas, fish and gravy with a passion usually reserved for national anthems.
It is ridiculous, proudly Northern and completely irresistible. Once the tent has been packed away and the car loaded, standing in a field singing about 'Shopmobility Scooters' or a 'Chippy Tea' feels like a rite of passage. Kendal Calling’s final day has officially begun.
BEX provides a considerably louder change of direction at Woodlands. Armed with a bass guitar and a confrontational blend of punk, grunge and riot-grrrl attitude, she fills the stage with enough personality to make the surrounding trees feel like part of the audience.
‘SPYD4 K1NG’ lands with bass-heavy menace, while ‘Don’t Date the Devil’, ‘Taste Better’ and ‘Sum Kinda Syko’ turn frustration into tight, abrasive hooks. Beneath the distortion sits an artist unafraid to confront toxic relationships, self-doubt and the pressure to conform. It is raw, mischievous and exactly the jolt Sunday afternoon needs.
Florence Road arrive on the Main Stage carrying the momentum of one of Ireland’s most exciting recent breakthroughs. The Bray four-piece—Lily Aron, Emma Brandon, Ailbhe Barry and Hannah Kelly—began as childhood friends playing together in a garden shed, but their songs are rapidly becoming too large to remain anywhere near one.
‘Figure It Out’ and ‘Miss’ combine emotional unease with sharp alternative-rock hooks, while ‘Heavy’ lives up to its name without losing the melody at its centre. ‘Rabbits Can Swim’ brings a more atmospheric pull before ‘Break the Girl’ shows why the band have attracted comparisons with The Cranberries, Wolf Alice and the more guitar-driven edges of modern pop.
Aron’s rich vocals cut across the Main Stage as Brandon, Barry and Kelly build the kind of sound that can move from intimacy to eruption in a few seconds. Florence Road may still be near the beginning of their journey, but nothing about the performance feels small.
Bristol four-piece My First Time bring wit, attitude and restless post-punk energy to the Calling Out stage. Isaac Stroud-Allen, Jordanna Forsey, James Mellen and Naia Jones attack the set with impressive confidence, their jagged guitars, punchy rhythms and shared vocals giving songs such as ‘Wind Up Merchant’ and ‘Sippy Cup’ a sharp, playful edge inside the tightly packed tent.
‘Much Better’ turns frustration into an infectious hook, while the snarling ‘Picture of Health’ takes aim at modern dopamine culture with humour and real bite. Beneath Calling Out’s elaborate decoration, My First Time deliver a performance that feels chaotic without ever losing control—fast, funny and packed with enough personality to suggest that this will not be their last time at Kendal Calling.
The return to Woodlands brings one of Sunday’s most anticipated sets. Girl In The Year Above were my standout discovery at Tramlines last weekend, making the chance to see them again—this time among the trees at Kendal Calling—impossible to resist.
Led by a complete superstar called Jennifer Ball, the Irish-Cornish band create music that feels rooted in another era without becoming trapped there. Their sound draws on folk storytelling, smoky ’90s trip-hop and richly atmospheric alternative rock, giving the set a quality that is both nostalgic and strikingly fresh.
‘Mama, My Heart Is Achin’’ demonstrates Ball’s ability to make emotional vulnerability feel quietly commanding, while ‘Ode to the Glory Days’ carries the wistfulness promised by its title.
Their haunting interpretation of Massive Attack’s ‘Teardrop’, recorded for Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man, adds a cinematic stillness that feels perfectly suited to Woodlands. I don't mind admitting there were actual teardrops on my face - it was incredible and probably the standout moment of the entire weekend for me.
After making such an impression at Tramlines, expectations were high—but the band exceeded them. I decided to miss Massive Wagons and to stay for their whole set and immediately looked to their next tour dates as I need another fix.
Some festival discoveries fade once the weekend ends; Girl In The Year Above only become more intense with a second encounter. From that point on I decided to just get food a drink and settle at the main stage for the rest of the evening - nothing was going to top that on any of the smaller stages.
Primal Scream take the Main Stage into the evening with a catalogue that has spent decades blurring the boundaries between rock ’n’ roll, psychedelia and dance music. Bobby Gillespie remains the band’s unmistakable focal point, all wiry charisma and countercultural cool, while Andrew Innes’ guitar helps connect their different musical identities.
However, for tonight I spied another gun in their arsenal that lit a fuse under the band and made the overall performance much more rock'n'roll than anything else. Pretenders and His Lordship guitarist James Walbourne was as usual on fire, and I loved the interaction between Gillespie and his new guitar slinger.
‘Movin’ on Up’ opens the doors to Screamadelica’s gospel-soaked optimism, while ‘Loaded’ remains one of the great festival tracks—a groove loose enough to drift but powerful enough to move an entire field. ‘Jailbird’ and ‘Rocks’ supply the Stones like strut, and ‘Country Girl’ brings a chorus built for the open air.
Primal Scream’s greatest strength has always been their refusal to settle into one shape. They can sound like a psychedelic rock band, an underground club act and a gang of leather-clad troublemakers within the same set. With James Walbourne in their team a new rock'n'roll dimension has been realised.
Then, for the final time this weekend, the Main Stage lights fall.
Wolf Alice emerge to close Kendal Calling 2026—and for me, it is the third time seeing them in as many weeks. Familiarity could have dulled the impact, but Wolf Alice are not a band whose live performances settle into routine. Their songs shift depending on the setting: intimate one night, overwhelming the next. Here, with the festival’s final hours hanging over the field, everything carries additional weight.
Ellie Rowsell commands the stage without relying on conventional rock-star theatrics. Alongside Joff Oddie, Theo Ellis and Joel Amey, she guides the set between delicate restraint, shoegaze haze and sudden eruptions of guitar noise.
Newer material from The Clearing reveals the increasingly expansive shape of the band. ‘Bloom Baby Bloom’ places Rowsell’s voice at the centre as a force of its own, while ‘Thorns’, ‘White Horses’ and ‘The Sofa’ bring warmth, maturity and widescreen ambition. These songs do not merely sit beside the earlier work—they change the emotional landscape around it.
‘Bros’ remains a beautiful celebration of friendship, carrying particular resonance as the weekend draws to a close. ‘You’re a Germ’ and ‘Yuk Foo’ rip through the sentimentality with teeth bared, while ‘Giant Peach’ grows into the kind of towering wall of sound that seems to shake the entire field.
‘How Can I Make It OK?’ rises gradually towards catharsis, Rowsell’s voice stretching over the crowd as thousands join her. ‘The Last Man on Earth’ provides another moment of near-stillness, its piano-led opening expanding until it fills every available space beneath the Cumbrian sky.
‘Don’t Delete the Kisses’. Its nervous, tumbling thoughts become a field-wide declaration, voices joining as lights spread across the crowd. Even on the third Wolf Alice performance in three weeks, the song finds something new in this particular moment: the final night, the packed car and the knowledge that the journey home is waiting.
Wolf Alice close Kendal Calling with a performance that captures everything the band do so well—beauty and abrasion, confidence and vulnerability, intimacy delivered on an enormous scale. As the last notes disappear into the darkness, the weekend is over.
Kendal Calling began with the punishing journey from car to campsite, hauling far too much equipment across fields and up hills before the tent was finally standing and the first beer could be opened. Four days later, the same equipment is packed into the car, legs are aching and voices have been reduced to a rasp—but the effort has been repaid many times over.
The weekend’s biggest stages delivered the huge communal moments: The Kooks closing Thursday with ‘Naïve’, Two Door Cinema Club turning Friday into an indie dance floor, Biffy Clyro flame throwing during Saturday and Wolf Alice bringing the entire festival to an emotional finish.
Yet Kendal Calling’s real character existed in the movement between those headline performances. It was found in Lottery Winners fooling nobody as The Kokos, Scissor Sisters covering the Main Stage in disco glitter and The Lancashire Hotpots leading thousands of people in praise of a chippy tea.
It was also found in the smaller spaces. Brooki, Bleech 9:3, Girl In The Year Above and others demonstrated why leaving the Main Stage behind remains essential. Woodlands and Calling Out offered the thrill of catching artists on the rise, while Tim Peaks Diner, Soapbox and the Oktoberfest Tent ensured the weekend could move from intimate songwriting to comedy, bingo and brass-fuelled mayhem without warning.
That variety is what makes Kendal Calling so special. It can provide enormous headline spectacle without losing the feeling that something strange, funny or brilliant may be happening just beyond the next row of trees. It is large enough to feel like a genuine escape, but still filled with the eccentric details and shared traditions that give it a personality of its own.
There are moments during the weekend—the uphill trek, the queue for the toilets, the aching feet and the Sunday morning tent battle—when festival life feels like an endurance sport. Then a favourite song begins, a new band takes you completely by surprise or an entire field sings the same chorus, and every difficult part becomes worthwhile.
Driving away from Lowther Deer Park means leaving behind four days of music, laughter, questionable decisions and unforgettable performances. The promise to rest properly will only last until the next line-up is announced.
Kendal Calling has done it again. We are tired, battered and already looking forward to coming back next year.
Ticket Link for early birds will be open on Thursday 6th August at 10am - See You In Those Fields!!
