“Primavera was a dreamy, all-encompassing slice of escapism. At its best it was a warm embrace; a rush of chemical pleasure, and the best nights out I’ve had in ages.”
Although Glastonbury reigns supreme as Europe’s musically and culturally dominant festival, Primavera Sound continues to forge its reputation as the absolute next best thing. Its recent years have been utterly triumphant; capturing the continental musical zeitgeist like nothing else. The depth & variety of the 2026 edition meant countless clashes across the weekend. Choosing between Overmono or Ben UFO is a choice nobody should ever be confronted with. In the grand scheme of things, though, it’s a nice headache to have.
Speaking of headaches, as the gates opened on the Thursday and handfuls of Brits who had perhaps got carried away on Wednesday evening stumbled through them, hangovers were melted away on the idyllic Catalonian coastline.
Men I Trust played a lovely set of sleazy, indie dream-pop, before we wandered over to the Plenitude stage. This was a personal favourite; a simple, somewhat brutalist dancefloor nestled beneath an underpass adjacent to the festival’s entrance. It was there that Berlioz kicked-off the festival with a three-hour set on the Thursday evening. I’d be inclined to say “warmed-up”, but the reality was the exact polar opposite. Inclement conditions would soon grind the festival to a halt, as rumours swirled that the entire night would be cancelled. Those that persevered on the smaller stages, such as Skullcrusher and Ahadadream, were excellent in challenging circumstances. Sadly, Massive Attack’s much-anticipated slot on Estrella Damm was cancelled due to the storm. Before, bizarrely, being apparently reinstated for 12:30am. There was a wonderfully dark humour to their performance being cancelled again without so much as a word to the waiting crowd. The initial cancellations, confusing comms, rescheduling and repeat cancellations became a truly bizarre loop to be stuck in. Stewart Lee is evidence that a joke can initially be funny, before then getting stale, and becoming funny again the longer it goes on. This was Thursday night at Primavera Sound 2026.
However, that wasn’t all. On the intimate Cupra Pulse, sheltered from the elements, Rustie made an astonishing, triumphant return to the decks as the rain continued to fall. He shelled an incredible set of old favourites from Glass Swords, in one of his only live performances in his last decade. In another wonderful surprise given the dire outlook earlier in the night, Overmono’s signature bass drums whirred up for their headline 3am slot on Occident. A crowd skipped through the rain as they kicked into “If U Ever”. From there, tunes from their new album were spliced with Freedom 2, So U Kno and their banging remix of High Contrast’s If We Ever. Overmono were on rare form, and if their Primavera set was anything to go by then their forthcoming album is likely to be phenomenal.
The entire lineup was a treat for those of us who are fans of what the Criminal Justice Bill would call “the emission of a succession of repetitive beats”. Skrillex’s peak-time Friday night set on Revolut was a glorious amalgamation of each of the styles & sounds which brought him to this point. It’s also a sign of his impressive musical dexterity that he pulled this off without reaching for bigger tunes from those halcyon days like Bangarang and Kyoto. Instead, he tore into some seemingly unreleased material and his remix of Avicii’s Levels. There were nods to Sonny’s reverence for UK club culture, with tunes from Four Tet & Blawan, which was an encouraging sign of things to come.
Social media was set ablaze on Friday evening with rumours that Kieran Hebden himself was on the festival site. The “Curated by Sonny” lineup on Cupra Pulse on the Saturday evening did have a certain shape to it which suggested that the Coachella headliners might be about to pair up once again. The set times would leak a short-while later and confirm that all three protagonists would play in sequence and then b2b. According to those inside, and to the surprise of precisely nobody, all three absolutely shelled it.
It’s a sign of Primavera’s astonishing pull and reputation that such surprises are even possible. It’s an enormous credit that the festival respects its punters enough to tempt the odd rabbit out of the occasional hat. If anything, this announcement was dwarfed by the news that Olivia Rodrido would be performing a surprise set that same Saturday evening. Olivia was utterly sublime. If comparisons to Glastonbury are to continue to hold, her set was surely a wink to a prominent slot at next year’s festival.
Estrella Damm and Revolut sit side-by-side, with the festival taking an innovative approach to minimise the waiting time between their headline acts. The programming between the two adjacent stages was utterly sublime. A run of Little Simz- My Bloody Valentine- The xx- Gorillaz stands up to just about anything. All three were absolutely exceptional, though Romy & Jamie xx’s performances stood out among an incredibly crowded field. Their set closing with “I Dare You” was a highlight of a phenomenal sounding festival.
The Cupra stage was the weekend’s most interesting given the breadth of artists performing and utterly obscene crowds some of them drew. On Thursday, the enigmatic Japanese DJ Yosuke Yukimatsu had laid out a beautifully bizarre musical tapestry for a hardened crowd of sodden-4:30am ravers. The Chemical Brothers’ “Swoon” was interspersed with various elements of rock & hip-hop, before he shelled the likes of Empirion’s ferocious remix of The Prodigy’s “Firestarter”; which brought the curtain down on a bizarre evening’s entertainment.
The highlights on Friday night were JADE and PinkPantheress. The latter being an incredibly contemporary phenomenon who has the Tiktok algorithms in a chokehold, placing her on the festival’s fourth largest stage was a baffling decision. I remain convinced that this is often deliberate, with an injection of notoriety and chaos adding to the overall experience.
As the Saturday night drew to a close, Peggy Gou played a perfectly good Peggy Gou set. It feels churlish to frame this as a criticism, but the magnitude of Primavera Sound demands something more. Just as the Pyramid Stage’s Sunday night slot holds a uniquely captivating mystique; Primavera’s Saturday night closing slot inches ever closer to that same legendary status. The streets are saying that Blawan was doing a magnificent job on Cupra Pulse, but the queueing Gods were sadly against us by that point. Much of your own contentment from AAA calibre festivals is accepting that you won’t be able to see everything and enjoying whatever you do catch. The relentless quality of the lineup meant I missed a substantial amount of acts I would have loved to have seen, but I wouldn’t change a thing.
The 2027 edition will have substantially less making-up to do than first anticipated. Primavera Sound 2026 recovered from an initial stumble to run an utterly flawless race. Despite some well-publicised issues with bottlenecks and waterpoints in recent years, the festival functions incredibly well. The changes to the layout of the site over the years, notably switching out Primavera Bits and incorporating stages closer to the festival exit, have largely been successful. Queues at the toilets & bars were manageable and there was only one real thoroughfare where the crowd movement really slowed. This is fairly easy to stomach, however, when the people you’re trudging alongside are generally quite lovely. Primavera Sound was largely a festival inhabited by hipsters and scenesters from a variety of musical palettes. In similarly shocking news, a fork was found in my kitchen when I eventually arrived home.
Music festivals can often be judged by how untethered from reality you feel while inside their grounds. This weekend at Primavera, and then walking along the coastline as the sun rose over Barcelona, was the sort of beautiful hedonism usually saved for the closing shot of an A24 film. If nothing else, Primavera was a dreamy, all-encompassing slice of escapism. At its best it was a warm embrace; a rush of chemical pleasure, and the best nights out I’ve had in ages.