After a summer of abnormal, scorching warmth and weeks-long stretches without so much as a drop of rain, day one of Reading Festival 2026 feels almost quaint. The sky is an ocean of dark, angry grey; rain clatters down over throngs of inadequately waterproofed revellers. During a set from the US rock band Geese, the tented stage springs a leak, dousing a metre-by-metre patch in the middle of the crowd.
In other words, fear not: the British Festival Experience lives! Like most festivals of its size, Reading has only a loose musical identity at this point. Its bookers don’t tend to discriminate between rock, pop, and hip-hop; if young people listen to it, they’ll have it.
With the notable exception of a set by grime pioneer Skepta, though, Friday’s bill is distinctly rock-focused. There’s even a Gallagher on the lineup – not Noel or Liam, but Liam’s son Gene. His grunge band Villanelle were booked to play Reading’s new Canopy stage, which controversially replaces the longstanding BBC Introducing stage.
The ostensibly grassroots-oriented Canopy has since been dubbed the “nepo baby stage” thanks to its platforming of various industry children-ofs, from Gene to Violet Grohl (daughter of Foo Fighters’ Dave) and Cruz Beckham. There are few rock bands around buzzier than Geese, the New York outfit fronted by the soulful and shaggy-haired 24-year-old Cameron Winter. Pulling mostly from their 2025 breakout album Getting Killed, Geese put on a robust, seamless show that brings a lot of energy out of the audience.
They do, it has to be said, have the feel of a band who have spent months now touting the same set of songs around Europe; their dispassionate, almost lackadaisical stage manner feels a little too genuine. But there’s no faulting the musicianship here, or the material; these things cannot be shrugged off. Whether or not Charli XCX’s latest album Music, Fashion, Film fits the definition of rock music has been a tedious point of discussion this year. (The answer is sort-of-but-not-really, though there’s not much to be gained from quibbling over labels.) Her set on Reading’s main stage splits the difference, presentation-wise; for tracks off the new album (including the glitchy-vocaled “Rock Music”, and the faux-coy “Wink Wink”), she brings out live guitarists as backing.
When she switches back to the snappy electropop of Brat, the band disappears. Though she’s made every effort to move on from the Brat phenomenon, Charli wisely features plenty of it here. The song is barely two years old but she’s not wrong.
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