Pepsi Presents Leeds Festival 2026 @ Bramham Park - Day Three - Saturday 29th August
- John Hayhurst
- 8 hours ago
- 8 min read
Fontaines D.C. Finally take the deserved Headline Spot as Leeds Festival Turns Up the Guitars for Saturday
Words - John Hayhurst
Photos - John Hayhurst & Abbi Draper Scott
Friday was the first real opportunity to find out how the new-look Leeds Festival works when all five stages are in full swing.
Mulaa Joans started our day inside The Gallery before Westside Cowboy gave us our first proper look at The Ballroom, with Julia Wolf taking us back to The Gallery and Violet Grohl showing exactly why The Canopy could become one of the most useful additions to Leeds for discovering new artists.
Pepsi Presents Leeds Festival 2026 @ Bramham Park - Day Three - Saturday 29th August Pepsi Presents Leeds Festival 2026 @ Bramham Park - Day Three - Saturday 29th August Pepsi Presents Leeds Festival 2026 @ Bramham Park - Day Three - Saturday 29th August Pepsi Presents Leeds Festival 2026 @ Bramham Park - Day Three - Saturday 29th August Pepsi Presents Leeds Festival 2026 @ Bramham Park - Day Three - Saturday 29th August Pepsi Presents Leeds Festival 2026 @ Bramham Park - Day Three - Saturday 29th August Pepsi Presents Leeds Festival 2026 @ Bramham Park - Day Three - Saturday 29th August Pepsi Presents Leeds Festival 2026 @ Bramham Park - Day Three - Saturday 29th August
Role Model brought us onto The Grid before Florence + The Machine delivered Friday's huge main-stage moment, but our day wasn't finished there. Paris Paloma filled The Ballroom before Kneecap brought Friday to a considerably less restrained conclusion inside The Gallery.
Saturday means doing it all again, and our first stop is The Canopy for Tooth.
The London alternative-rock band are one of the smallest names we're covering across the weekend and exactly the sort of act The Canopy appears to have been designed for. There isn't the weight of expectation that comes later in the day, nor a crowd waiting impatiently for a particular hit. Instead, Tooth get the opportunity to introduce themselves to people who, in plenty of cases, have probably walked into The Canopy knowing very little about them.
From one of the weekend's lesser-known names, we're off to The Ballroom for Bleech 9:3.
The Irish four-piece have had a remarkable rise over the past year, but what makes them interesting is that very little about the music feels manufactured to capitalise on it. Frontman Barry Quinlan and guitarist Sam Duffy bring genuine personal experience into songs dealing with addiction, sobriety and everything that comes with both, and that gives Bleech 9:3 an emotional weight that isn't always immediately obvious beneath the guitars.
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Jacky has regularly been their live opener and wastes little time getting the set moving, while No Surprise and Cannonball demonstrate why comparisons with some much bigger guitar bands have started appearing around them.
Underrated is one of the strongest songs from their self-titled debut EP, but Ceiling is where the more vulnerable side of Bleech 9:3 comes through. With a short festival slot there isn't much time for excess anyway, and the band's directness works in their favour. They arrive, make their point and leave The Ballroom having justified why we've been hearing their name so often this summer.
Lamb brought a little bit of Venice Beach to The Canopy on Saturday, with the Los Angeles artist's experimental blend of house, alternative pop and electronic textures making for an interesting change of pace so early in the day. There is something distinctly Californian about the looseness of the music, but it isn't simply sunshine-and-palm-trees pop. Lamb's production has a darker, more textured edge, with melody and lyricism sitting alongside the electronic elements rather than being swallowed by them.
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For an artist still building her audience, she made good use of the space. The Canopy gave her a smaller, more intimate setting than the stages later in the day, but there was enough going on musically to make people stop and listen rather than simply pass through on their way to the next act.
Next comes a significant change in scale though as we head to The Grid for KEO.
The London band have spent much of the past couple of years being talked about as one of British guitar music's next prospects, and a Leeds main-stage appearance is a useful opportunity to see how far that promise has developed.
There is considerably more ambition to KEO than simply trying to recreate the guitar bands they grew up listening to. I Lied, Amber is still one of the best examples of what they do, beginning with enough restraint to let the vocal breathe before the guitars take control. Fly has become another important part of their live set, while Crow shows the heavier edge that prevents things becoming too polished.
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KEO are still developing and there are moments where that shows, but that's considerably more interesting than watching a young band arrive sounding completely finished. The jump to The Grid is a sizeable one. They don't look out of place making it.
Over in The Gallery, ADÉLA drew one of the biggest crowds we saw at the stage across the weekend, and once the set got underway, it was easy to see why. Opening with KGB, she immediately took control of the space, moving through a set that included FinallyApologizing, Boys, Go and DeathByDevotion.
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The music was only part of the performance. ADÉLA's dancing was sharp, precise and genuinely superb throughout, giving the set the kind of energy that made it difficult to look anywhere else. Every movement felt deliberate, with the choreography matching the attitude of the songs without ever taking attention away from her as a performer.
Tracks including Ain't in LA, Red Bottoms, Marijuana and SexOnTheBeat kept the momentum going before SUPERSCAR brought the set to a close. The immersive production of The Gallery undoubtedly helped create the atmosphere, but with such a huge crowd gathered inside, it was ADÉLA herself who remained firmly at the centre of it.
Meanwhile, we're still unofficially calling The Canopy the Nepo Baby Stage. With Violet Grohl playing yesterday and Cruz Beckham also appearing across the weekend, the addition of People I've Met, featuring Chris Martin's son Moses Martin, and Villanelle, fronted by Liam Gallagher's son Gene, made the nickname increasingly difficult to ignore.
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Neither set was particularly for us, and famous surnames can only take a band so far. People I've Met and Villanelle will both inevitably attract curiosity because of who their frontmen's fathers are, but the music ultimately has to stand on its own.
Sometimes, the famous parent is more interesting than the band.
We're then back inside The Gallery for Skye Newman, and by this point Saturday is moving in a completely different direction.
Newman has had an extraordinary couple of years. Her voice is instantly recognisable — rough around the edges when it needs to be but capable of becoming surprisingly delicate — and there's very little distance between the person she's singing about in the songs and the one standing on stage.
Hairdresser has been opening her recent festival sets, followed by Man of the House, while FU & UF introduces the considerably less apologetic side of Newman.
Songs including Crawling and Woman I Am keep the middle of the set moving, but My Addiction is particularly effective live. There is no attempt to disguise the emotion behind it.
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A new one It's Not Raining Today follows. Then come the songs that have introduced Newman to a much wider audience. Walk already produces the reaction of a song considerably older than it actually is, before Family Matters provides a fitting end to a set that demonstrates why she has moved from emerging artist to major festival stages so quickly.
We stay at The Gallery for Geese, although musically it feels as though we've gone to another planet in the constellation of Zappa.
Trying to predict exactly what Cameron Winter and his band are going to do with a song live is becoming increasingly pointless, which is part of the attraction.
Geese are loose without sounding under-rehearsed and chaotic without actually losing control. Winter's voice moves from drawl to shout and occasionally into noises that don't particularly resemble either, while the band around him seem perfectly happy pulling songs apart and putting them back together differently. As comedian Eric Morecambe would say "They are playing all the right notes but not necessarily in the right order."
Husbands and Getting Killed have been regular early fixtures in their 2026 sets, while 2122 demonstrates how easily Geese can take something already strange on record and make it stranger on stage, for instance Winter decides to play Tainted Love by Soft Cell down the mic midway through the performance.
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100 Horses is another standout. Then there's Taxes, perhaps the clearest example of why the band's reputation has expanded so quickly. What initially sounds almost awkward eventually locks into place, perhaps they really are the long lost kids of Frank Zappa.
Geese aren't necessarily going to be everyone's favourite band at Leeds. They're probably not particularly interested in trying to be. They're considerably more fun because of it.
From there, we head back to The Ballroom for unpeople, who immediately increase the volume.
The British four-piece sit somewhere between alternative rock, punk and metal without appearing particularly concerned about deciding which one they belong to. What matters more live is the amount of energy they can squeeze into a relatively short festival appearance.
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Waste gets straight to the point, while Going Numb and Bottle It give the set some enormous choruses without sanding down the heavier edges.
Overthinking and Smother keep things moving before Moon Baboon shows the slightly stranger side of the band. By the time clouds arrives, The Ballroom feels considerably smaller than it did when they walked onto the stage.
And then comes The Garden.
It has become unpeople's natural closer and it isn't difficult to understand why. Everything that has been building through the set gets thrown into the final few minutes, leaving very little behind when they eventually walk off.
Finally our Saturday ends back outside at The Grid for Fontaines D.C.
This one feels important and personal. I've watched Fontaines over several years, tours and albums, getting better and more experimental with every release, and now seeing them as a headliner at Leeds Festival is a special 'coming of age' party.
Grian Chatten, Carlos O'Connell, Conor Curley, Conor Deegan III and Tom Coll have made that transition without ever really reshaping Fontaines D.C. into what anyone might expect a festival-headlining band to sound or act like. If anything, they've become stranger as they've become bigger.
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Boys in the Better Land remains one of the most direct connections to their beginnings and is still ferocious live, while Here's the Thing and Jackie Down the Line demonstrate just how much the band's sound has expanded since those early records.
It's Amazing to Be Young has quickly earned its place alongside them, while Televised Mind brings back some of the repetition and menace that made Fontaines so compelling in the first place.
There is something new this summer too. Marianne, the first glimpse of forthcoming fifth album Dopamine Chamber, introduces the next version of Fontaines D.C. before the current one has even finished having its moment. We then have a special unique moment as Happy For You gets it's live debut albeit a false start as Tom starts to play Hurricane Laughter drum intro.
Nabokov is brutal live. Big barely gives anyone time to settle before it's finished, while Favourite provides one of the rare moments where the band's music seems genuinely warm. Then there is In the Modern World, expansive and strangely beautiful, before the closing section reminds everyone that Fontaines D.C. haven't become a headline band by suddenly making things easy.
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I Love You has grown into something enormous on festival stages, Chatten almost spitting the words as the guitars build around him.
And then Starburster finishes it. The In Heaven intro, the uncomfortable breathing, the bass, Chatten prowling across the runway of The Grid — it still feels odd that something this abrasive has become one of the band's biggest songs.
Perhaps that's the best explanation for Fontaines D.C.'s journey to the top of the Festival ladder. They haven't spent the past few years learning how to become a headline band. They've simply become big enough that festivals have had to let them headline. The final notes ring out, Chatten blows Leeds a kiss, turns and walks down the runway as the backdrop blazes the Irish tricolour flag in smoke and lights.
After three days at Bramham Park, there's now only Sunday left and we still haven't had any significant rain.
We'll be heading first to The Canopy for Cruz Beckham and The Breakers, another of those bookings on the 'Nepo Baby' Stage where curiosity alone should ensure plenty of people arrive early to find out exactly what Beckham has to offer away from the inevitable attention surrounding his surname.
Later we'll be back at The Grid for JADE, whose transformation from Little Mix member to solo artist has produced some of the most interesting British pop of the past couple of years. Then comes RAYE. Her progression from fighting to release her own music to occupying one of the biggest slots at Leeds Festival has been extraordinary, but it's the voice rather than the story behind it that we're interested in hearing on The Grid.
It feels like an appropriate way to finish our Leeds Festival. Three days down. One more trip around Bramham Park to go.
