Download festival is the undisputed home of rock and metal here in the UK. Saying that, though, and with our ears still ringing as we reflect on another amazing weekend of music at Download 2026, you can’t help but notice that the festival is happily embracing more and more wildcard bookings from outside of the genre we all love; Five, Scooter and Cypress Hill this year joined the recent bookings of Vengaboys, McFly and Busted to make their debuts at Donington.
You can do one of two things with this surprisingly evolutionary step: you can act the purist, grumpily fold your arms and moan that this is not in line with what you want from Download, or, alternatively, you can do what the majority of punters did this weekend and enjoy these bookings for the fun little added extra they are.
