Pepsi Presents Leeds Festival 2026 @ Bramham Park - Day One - Thursday 27th August
- John Hayhurst
- 4 minutes ago
- 5 min read
Leeds Festival Makes History as Kasabian Kick Off a New Era at Bramham Park
Words and Photos - John Hayhurst
Leeds Festival is back at Bramham Park, but for 2026 things are looking a little different. In fact, this is the biggest overhaul of the festival arena in its 37-year history, with familiar stage names disappearing and five new identities taking their place.
At the centre of it all is The Grid, the new name and home of the main stage, while The Gallery is a new undercover space surrounded by LED screens and immersive production. Dance music gets its own purpose-built home inside The Warehouse, complete with viewing areas both in front of and behind the decks, and then there is The Ballroom, perhaps the most unusual of the new additions, dressed with chandeliers and draping and bringing together some of the most interesting names lower down the bill. Finally, The Canopy is where Leeds is placing its emerging artists, giving new music a dedicated stage of its own.
We'll be spending the next four days finding out whether the changes work, photographing and reviewing our way around all stages and inevitably discovering a few artists we hadn't planned on seeing along the way. Thursday, though, gives everyone a slightly gentler introduction to the new-look Leeds. Most of the arena is still waiting for Friday before things really get moving, with just The Grid opening for three bands across the early evening.
Manchester's Arkayla have the job of opening it.
Pepsi Presents Leeds Festival 2026 @ Bramham Park - Day One - Thursday 27th August Pepsi Presents Leeds Festival 2026 @ Bramham Park - Day One - Thursday 27th August Pepsi Presents Leeds Festival 2026 @ Bramham Park - Day One - Thursday 27th August Pepsi Presents Leeds Festival 2026 @ Bramham Park - Day One - Thursday 27th August Pepsi Presents Leeds Festival 2026 @ Bramham Park - Day One - Thursday 27th August Pepsi Presents Leeds Festival 2026 @ Bramham Park - Day One - Thursday 27th August Pepsi Presents Leeds Festival 2026 @ Bramham Park - Day One - Thursday 27th August Pepsi Presents Leeds Festival 2026 @ Bramham Park - Day One - Thursday 27th August Pepsi Presents Leeds Festival 2026 @ Bramham Park - Day One - Thursday 27th August Pepsi Presents Leeds Festival 2026 @ Bramham Park - Day One - Thursday 27th August Pepsi Presents Leeds Festival 2026 @ Bramham Park - Day One - Thursday 27th August Pepsi Presents Leeds Festival 2026 @ Bramham Park - Day One - Thursday 27th August Pepsi Presents Leeds Festival 2026 @ Bramham Park - Day One - Thursday 27th August Pepsi Presents Leeds Festival 2026 @ Bramham Park - Day One - Thursday 27th August Pepsi Presents Leeds Festival 2026 @ Bramham Park - Day One - Thursday 27th August
It is a considerable jump in scale for a band we've previously watched in much smaller surroundings (Calling Out Stage - Kendal Calling), but Arkayla don't look particularly intimidated by the amount of space in front of them. Frontman Calum Byrne has the confidence needed to carry songs written for sweaty venues onto a festival main stage, while the rest of the band give him enough weight behind them to prevent the songs disappearing into the open air.
Lost In A Valentine is an obvious early highlight and one of the tracks that best demonstrates why Arkayla have been picking up attention over the past couple of years. Fortune Teller follows the same melodic instincts, while Doctor has considerably more bite live. There is room for Waste Of Time too before Run Kid provides the kind of finish that works particularly well in a festival slot.
What makes the set interesting isn't that Arkayla suddenly feel like a main-stage-sized band. They don't need to. They still have some of the rough edges of a group working their way upwards, and putting them onto The Grid actually makes that progression more apparent. But there's enough here to suggest that appearing this early on the bill won't be the last time they find themselves on a stage this size.
The difference when The Lathums arrive is immediately noticeable. The Wigan band have spent the past few years becoming increasingly comfortable with festival crowds and Alex Moore now has little trouble getting one on his side.
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Moore's voice remains the band's biggest asset. There is a vulnerability to his delivery that could easily be lost on a stage this large, particularly during the quieter moments, but The Lathums have become very good at knowing when to let that vulnerability through and when guitarist Scott Concepcion, bassist Matty Murphy and drummer Ryan Durrans need to push things forward.
Say My Name gets the set moving before Circles of Faith shows off the slightly bigger sound the band have developed without abandoning what people liked about them in the first place. How Beautiful Life Can Be inevitably brings one of the strongest reactions, its chorus now familiar enough that Moore doesn't have to do all of the singing himself.
Fight On remains particularly effective live, but Sad Face Baby is The Lathums at their best: initially restrained before gradually growing into something much bigger. By the time they leave The Grid, they've done exactly what was needed of them. This isn't their night and they know it, but they've made Kasabian work for the change in atmosphere that follows.
And then comes the reason Thursday at Leeds feels different this year.
There have been countless Thursday nights at Bramham Park, but there has never been a Thursday night quite like this one. Kasabian are the first band in Leeds Festival history to headline the main stage on a Thursday, and if you're going to experiment with adding another headline night, booking a band with this many festival-ready songs is a fairly safe way of doing it.
Pepsi Presents Leeds Festival 2026 @ Bramham Park - Day One - Thursday 27th August Pepsi Presents Leeds Festival 2026 @ Bramham Park - Day One - Thursday 27th August Pepsi Presents Leeds Festival 2026 @ Bramham Park - Day One - Thursday 27th August Pepsi Presents Leeds Festival 2026 @ Bramham Park - Day One - Thursday 27th August Pepsi Presents Leeds Festival 2026 @ Bramham Park - Day One - Thursday 27th August Pepsi Presents Leeds Festival 2026 @ Bramham Park - Day One - Thursday 27th August Pepsi Presents Leeds Festival 2026 @ Bramham Park - Day One - Thursday 27th August Pepsi Presents Leeds Festival 2026 @ Bramham Park - Day One - Thursday 27th August Pepsi Presents Leeds Festival 2026 @ Bramham Park - Day One - Thursday 27th August
There is very little easing into proceedings. Club Foot arrives almost immediately and Serge Pizzorno is already covering practically every usable section of the stage. Since taking over as frontman, Pizzorno has grown increasingly comfortable being the focal point of Kasabian and the combination of him, bassist Chris Edwards, drummer Ian Matthews and guitarist Tim Carter now feels like a band that has completely adjusted to its current incarnation.
Newer material gets its place rather than being treated as something to endure between older songs. Call sits comfortably towards the beginning of the set and Hippie Sunshine brings the band's latest chapter into a setlist otherwise packed with songs that have spent years being tested on festival crowds.
But Kasabian understand exactly why a Leeds audience wants them here.
Underdog is followed by Days Are Forgotten, before the opening of Shoot The Runner immediately produces another change in the crowd. Empire sounds enormous on The Grid and You're In Love With A Psycho provides one of the night's easiest choruses.
Pepsi Presents Leeds Festival 2026 @ Bramham Park - Day One - Thursday 27th August Pepsi Presents Leeds Festival 2026 @ Bramham Park - Day One - Thursday 27th August Pepsi Presents Leeds Festival 2026 @ Bramham Park - Day One - Thursday 27th August Pepsi Presents Leeds Festival 2026 @ Bramham Park - Day One - Thursday 27th August Pepsi Presents Leeds Festival 2026 @ Bramham Park - Day One - Thursday 27th August Pepsi Presents Leeds Festival 2026 @ Bramham Park - Day One - Thursday 27th August Pepsi Presents Leeds Festival 2026 @ Bramham Park - Day One - Thursday 27th August Pepsi Presents Leeds Festival 2026 @ Bramham Park - Day One - Thursday 27th August
There isn't much subtlety to a Kasabian headline set, but pretending otherwise would rather miss the point. Pizzorno conducts the audience as much as he performs to it, stretching songs, demanding movement and refusing to allow much of a gap between one reaction and the next.
TREAT pushes the set towards its more electronic side before Vlad The Impaler brings back some menace, and then comes L.S.F. (Lost Souls Forever). It remains one of those songs that barely needs the band once the chorus arrives, thousands of voices taking over as it stretches across Bramham Park.
There can only really be one ending.
Fire has been closing Kasabian festival sets for years for the simple reason that very little in their catalogue can follow it. The opening restraint lasts only long enough to make the inevitable release hit harder, and when it does, The Grid finally gets the full Leeds Festival headline treatment.
Thursday might have given us only three bands, but Friday is where the new Leeds Festival really gets put to the test. All five stages come into play and suddenly we're going from one straightforward run of bands to deciding which direction to head next.
One of our first stops will be The Ballroom for Westside Cowboy, a Manchester band whose rise has been difficult to ignore and who seem particularly well suited to one of Leeds' more interesting new stages. Over at The Canopy, Violet Grohl is another name firmly on our Friday list and one of the sets we're most curious to see over the weekend.
Later, Kneecap take over The Gallery, which could prove to be one of the best combinations of artist and stage Leeds has put together this year. An enclosed crowd, huge LED production and Kneecap aren't exactly ingredients for a quiet evening.
And eventually we'll be heading back to where Thursday began.
Florence + The Machine close The Grid on Friday night, bringing the first full day of Leeds Festival 2026 to an end. Florence Welch has always seemed made for enormous festival stages, and with a catalogue that can move from the intimacy of Cosmic Love to the sheer scale of Dog Days Are Over and Shake It Out, it's one of the headline sets we've been looking forward to most.
Thursday has introduced us to the new Leeds. Tomorrow we find out what it's really like when all five stages are full.
