It’s a sunny Monday morning in a field in the middle of Cornwall.
Around you, tents are being piled haphazardly into trolleys by still-tipsy teenagers who you’re fairly sure haven’t been to bed yet. Middle-aged couples swan smugly towards the car park from the VIP area, clear-headed and sure-footed, visibly delighted to be heading back to their semi-detached three-bedroom on the outskirts of Exeter in time for the midday re-run of Question Time. Families stroll towards coffee vans, happy couples laugh at each other’s sunburn, and chattering groups of friends are already making plans for next year’s Cornish adventures.
As for you? Well, you’re in a reflective mood. So, rather than joining the exiting mob, you decide to sink into your slightly battered camping chair and watch the world go by while you spend a little while reminiscing about the weekend you’ve just had.
And that’s quite alright, really.
Because, dear reader, some weekends are worth reflecting on. And if ever there was a weekend worth remembering, it might just have been Boardmasters 2026.
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After all, you have had a rather good time.
Not only did you get to spend it in a genuinely gorgeous corner of the Cornish coast, a stone’s throw from the beach and a short hop, skip and shuttle bus away from the omni-excellent town of Newquay, but you also saw some pretty spectacular live music along the way.
And as you sit there, feet brushing against the grass while the deep hum of thousands of sleep-deprived teenagers envelops you like the soundtrack to a low-budget zombie movie, your mind can’t help but wander back to a few of your favourite sets from across the weekend.
But who, you ask?
Well, let’s dive in.
Dizzee Rascal
If there ever was a man who knew how to get the party started, it was Dizzee Rascal. And on the Friday afternoon on Boardmasters 2026, that’s precisely what he did.
Over the course of his oh-so-short hour-long set, Dizzee dropped more bangers than a clumsy butcher, with the likes of Fix Up Look Sharp, Holiday, and Dance Wiv Me inspired some early singalongs, before the inevitable (and glorious) finale of Bonkers ensured that every single person in that crowd was jumping around like a person possessed before the afternoon had even really kickstarted. Calling someone a ‘living legend’ is something of a tired journalistic trope: but in this instance, we’d be willing to argue that it’s true.
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The Kooks
And then if there was ever a band seemingly genetically engineered for a sunny afternoon in a field, it might just be The Kooks. Their songs haven’t aged a day, the band themselves barely seem to have either, and their particular brand of breezy indie-pop sounds absolutely gorgeous beneath the Cornish sunshine. Frankly, if you can’t enjoy The Kooks in this setting, we’re not entirely sure that anything can help you.
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Fatboy Slim
Fatboy Slim takes one look at tens of thousands of people who have been drinking in the sunshine all day and, quite correctly, decides that what they need is an enormous outdoor rave. It’s big tunes, big energy and the sort of ridiculous festival atmosphere that makes waking up in a tent the following morning almost seem worthwhile. It is, frankly, rather ridiculously good.
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Oh My God It’s The Church
Imagine, if you will, that Pitbull abandoned his career as Mr Worldwide and retrained as an evangelical gospel preacher. That’ll get you somewhere close to Oh My God It’s The Church, whose frankly unhinged combination of funk, soul, gospel and general silliness is even more bizarre when framed by an uninterrupted view of the Atlantic Ocean. It makes very little sense – and naturally, we absolutely love it.
Example
By Saturday afternoon, a morning spent lounging around on the beach has left the average Boardmasters attendee in need of a fairly substantial kick up the arse. Step forward Example, armed with enough noughties dance-pop nostalgia to temporarily convince a sizeable portion of the crowd that they’re seventeen again. It’s loud, daft and enormously good fun, and suddenly everybody seems remarkably awake. Funny, that.
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Ren
Ren, meanwhile, has considerably grander ambitions. His set is theatrical, unpredictable and packed with enough different ideas to keep you wondering what he’s going to do next. Singer, rapper, musician, performer, storyteller: there are a lot of strings to this particular Brightonian’s bow. We wouldn’t be surprised if he headlined this festival within the next five years.
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Lily Allen
If Ren brings theatre to Boardmasters, Lily Allen’s Saturday headline slot turns the place into the West End. West End Girl is performed in full, complete with all of the drama, wit and glorious bitterness that comes with it. And while we’re not here to interfere in anybody else’s marital affairs, we think it’s probably fair to say that her ex-husband isn’t currently at the top of her Christmas card list.
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Tom A. Smith
Every festival has one act who makes you wander into a tent at midday on a Sunday and leave wondering how on earth they’re still playing in that slot. And at Boardmasters, that person is Tom A. Smith. Imagine Jarvis Cocker and Mick Jagger being thrown into a blender with a sprinkling of 80s indie-rock and a frankly unreasonable amount of charisma, and you’ll get somewhere near it. He’s one to watch, in every sense.
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Tinie Tempah
And because apparently Example wasn’t enough to send us hurtling back towards our teenage years, along comes Tinie Tempah.It’s another glorious blast of nostalgia, packed with the sort of songs that immediately transport you back to sticky nightclub floors, dubious Facebook photo albums and a time when your knees didn’t hurt after jumping up and down for an hour. Simpler times, really.
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Beans On Toast
There’s something wonderfully Boardmasters about watching Beans On Toast sing songs and tell stories from a grassy bank overlooking the sea. The folk-punk raconteur has made a career from turning everyday observations into funny, warm and occasionally rather moving little tales, and this is pretty much the perfect setting for them. Sunshine, sea, songs and stories. What more do you need?
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Loyle Carner
By Sunday teatime, it’s fair to say that everybody could do with calming down a little. Fortunately, Loyle Carner’s warm blend of hip-hop, jazz and neo-soul is practically medicinal, drifting across the site with all the urgency of a lazy afternoon in a field in Cornwall. It’s soulful, understated and effortlessly lovely, and it’s exactly what tired heads and slightly battered bodies require.
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Kasabian
And then there’s the small matter of actually finishing the festival. Fortunately, Kasabian have never exactly struggled to fill a large field with noise. Armed with stadium-sized songs and enough energy to suggest that nobody bothered telling them it was Sunday night, they throw absolutely everything at their headline set – and by the end, Boardmasters doesn’t have much left to give either.
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And then, as soon as it began, it was all over.
The stages fell silent. The lights went out. The bars pulled their shutters down, and several thousand people suddenly remembered that, at some point, they were going to have to pack everything they owned into a trolley and drag it across a field.
Which brings us back here, to a sunny Monday morning in Cornwall, where your coffee is going cold, your camping chair is slowly sinking into the grass, and the population of Boardmasters is steadily disappearing towards car parks, shuttle buses and the warm embrace of an actual mattress.
You should probably join them – but, for another minute or two, you don’t. Because some weekends deserve a little looking back on. And this one really was rather good, wasn’t it?
