The stage lights dim and a roar erupts from a crowd drenched in black clothes and sweat. We’re at the UK’s biggest rock and metal festival, Download. The band make their way to the stage as the sea of people in front of them swells to fever pitch. There’s a hysterical tension in the air as the five-piece take a moment to take it all in and it begins…with UK pop royalty Five performing Everybody Get Up?
Those were the formerly unlikely scenes at Download 2026. Elsewhere you’ll see Limp Bizkit and Linkin Park on the main stage, but amongst these names you’d expect at a proud rock festival, acts like Vengaboys and McFly packed their tents to the rafters performing hits that would have once made purists scoff.
So, why the change? Well, it partly comes with age.
We all think we’re music experts at 16, but over time you realise that you can enjoy the drone-doom of SunO))) and also appreciate that Britney Spears’s ‘Toxic’ is an absolute banger. “There are so many pop bands of the 90s and 2000s that elitists may look at with disdain, but people in their thirties and fourties appreciate how great that type of pop music was back then,” says Dannika Webber, festival talent buyer at Live Nation.
Dannika and her team are behind this shift toward unabashed love of non-guilty pleasure music and a much wider array of festival entertainment. At Download, she heads up District X (formerly known as The Doghouse), which is very much a home for the more madcap side of the festival.
District X represent a diversifying of the festival experience, and it shows how audience demographics are changing too. For millennials, bands like McFly and Busted were teenage gateway drugs into the heavier stuff. “Busted and McFly were perhaps once deemed as a guilty pleasure, but now it’s just a pleasure,” says Dannika. “We really feel like we know the audience because we feel like we are the audience.”
Booking these types of acts is not a tokenistic gesture, either. They’re given the full Download experience. DJ sets from children’s entertainers Dick and Dom come with pryos and lasers. Long before Vengaboys took the stage in 2025, they were being played by Download’s late-night DJs and were one of the most requested bands on the festival’s social media. “The Vengaboys might seem a bit wild to an outsider, but there’s always nuance to why we book certain acts,” says Dannika. “Audiences want light relief, and the Vengaboys team really understood what we wanted to do.“
“The key thing with these types of bookings are never meant to be a joke. They’re supposed to be fun and an opportunity to host more great musicians,” Dannika goes on to say. “Vengaboys are already played by late-night Download DJs and can bring a party, and Five have so many rock references in their songs. McFly and Busted have a pop-punk audience and are amazing musicians in their own right. These are the weekend highlights for so many people.“
While bringing the Venga bus to Donington Park may get the headlines, it’s what happens in the hidden corners which gains equal attention.
Download for a long time has catered to its fans beyond the main stages, whether bringing WWE wrestling to the field or building temporary video game arcades. But when late-night arenas commonly begin and end with a silent disco, District X is where this side to Download is on show.
Over the past few years these outsider entertainment has become a core element to Download. And like any major festival change within the past six years, this is partly down to COVID. Download’s 2021 edition acted as a government sanctioned test pilot for how major events could operate in a new normal. In a very literal sense, it acted as a testing ground for how a virus could spread at major events. But for the festival itself, this forced them to think differently into how they would need to do things in the future.
“Prior to COVID, in our area of the site there was one club night per night, but with the pilot we were really able to curate it,” says Dannika. “It proved to be a great way to get everybody in the scene involved at the same time.“
After that experience, Dannika and her team were able to ask for “more things, more budget, more everything” to bring new elements to Download. For its 2026 weekender, that included Panic! At The Bingo, a Mecca hall experience for emos and pop-punkers. There were drag shows, live band karaoke – “everyone wants to be in the band, right?” says Dannika – and a partnership with the iconic gaming series Final Fantasy. Don’t fancy any of that? No worries, you can throw axes or partake in heavy metal olympics. “In the current economy people really want value for money,” says Dannika. “You need to create an experience that isn’t just about seeing a band or getting in the mosh pit.”
That said, there were originally some trepidations with what Dannika and her team could get away with. Metal and rock audiences hold a stereotype for being somewhat purist – there’s a reason for the term ‘rockist’, after all. But what Download are doing is asking folks to throw away their pre-held notions of what the festival ‘is’ and embrace an alternative to alternative music.
That ethos seems to be working. While Download will always have its faithful audience, those who return year on year to see the Iron Maidens and Metallicas of this world, this more experimental programming is finding new audiences. “Last year we had around 44% of new ticket buyers,” says Dannika. “We have our core community who comes back every year knowing they’re going to like the bands that we book, but these people are discovering much more.“
While Download will always be beautifully absurd in many ways, which includes the punters who return year on year despite the infamous rainy weather that Download always seems to fall victim of. But all this is to say that Download refuses to rest on its laurels. “It’s about creating a better experience,” says Dannika. “We just really want people to have fun, and our vision all along has been to try create a little world that really celebrates alternative culture and push the boundaries in places. But in general, it’s all just really good fun.“
Download Festival takes place 9-13 June 2027. Tickets are available now.
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