Reading Festival 2026 Day 2 Review

Words by Martyna Rozenbajgier

By Saturday, the Reading Festival site was well and truly muddy. Rain fell throughout the day, leaving puddles scattered across the site and turning every walk between stages into a careful attempt to keep your shoes intact. But the weather did little to distract from a day packed with performances, moving from intimate sets in The Ballroom and The Canopy to some of the festival’s biggest stages.

Photos by Wiktoria Wolny

The day began on The Grid with Absolutely, whose set immediately showcased her strong vocals. Over in The Ballroom, Fliss followed with a performance that placed her voice firmly at the centre. Her vocals were powerful enough to fill the tent, while her set also introduced shortman syndrome, a new song that gave the audience a taste of what she has been working on.

Photos by Wiktoria Wolny

At The Canopy, Amma brought both strong vocals and a playful energy to her performance. One of the highlights was her cover of Unwritten – perhaps one of the more fitting song choices for a day when the weather could hardly have been more unpredictable. The familiar chorus gave the crowd something easy to sing along to, while Amma’s own material showed off her vocal ability.

Between songs, Amma also found time for some humour, joking that her drummer is always relaxed because he uses all of his anger while playing the drums. She suggested that RAYE should try that herself. It was a small interaction, but it added to the relaxed atmosphere of the set and showed the personality behind the performance.

Photos by Wiktoria Wolny

Ruby Roberts also took to The Canopy with a vocal-led performance that quickly drew the audience in. Her vocals were particularly impressive, but the strongest indication of how well the set connected with the crowd came towards the end. Ruby closed with Trampoline, and the entire tent joined in, turning the final song into a huge singalong.

Photos by Wiktoria Wolny

The Canopy was packed once again for Cruz Beckham & The Breakers. Cruz delivered a confident performance, showing that he is more than capable of holding the attention of a festival crowd. His guitar playing added a strong live element to the set, allowing the music itself to take centre stage.

The performance also had its more personal moments. With his family watching from the crowd, Cruz dedicated one song to his younger sister, Harper, before throwing merchandise out into the audience.

Photos by Wiktoria Wolny

Back on The Grid, Maisie Peters paired strong vocals with a playful stage presence, making her set feel both confident and effortless. Her ability to interact with the audience became part of the set without taking away from the music. She recalled attending Reading Festival herself at 16 and sneaking in some alcohol before asking the crowd to scream if anyone had managed to do the same this year.

Her set balanced those lighter moments with her songs, allowing the audience to see the humour and character that sit alongside her music. It was an easy, confident performance that suited the festival setting.

JADE then turned The Grid into one of the day’s biggest pop moments. Her set combined her solo material with a mash-up of Little Mix songs, bringing together different parts of her musical career. Dancers joined her on stage, adding to the sense of a full-scale pop production.

The performance moved between styles, with Midnight Cowboy bringing a funkier edge before she turned to Little Mix’s Wasabi, dedicating the song to the haters in the audience. The response from the crowd was anything but hostile.

She closed with Church, dedicating the song to her LGBTQ+ fans, before Angel of My Dreams provided one of the set’s most memorable visuals. Fans lifted angel wings into the air as JADE performed, creating a sea of wings across the crowd and bringing the performance to an appropriately euphoric close.

Then came Sombr, whose performance was one of the day’s most energetic.

His entrance alone set the tone. He arrived on stage in an ambulance alongside Slayyyter, with the pair even doing push-ups together before the performance began. From there, sombr barely stopped moving. He jumped, danced and ran across the stage, waving his long-cabled microphone around and constantly interacting with the audience.

But the energy never came at the expense of his vocals. Sombr sounded genuinely strong live, proving that the songs that have made him such a rapidly rising name translate just as well to the stage. His voice remained clear and controlled even while he was constantly moving, making the performance feel as convincing vocally as it was visually.

The stage itself was designed around New York, with a bench inspired by Central Park, street-name signs attached to a lamp referencing Canal Street and a smoke effect that helped complete the setting. It turned the stage into its own little version of the city.

During back to friends, sombr sprayed “sombr <3 reading” onto a large flag before taking it around the stage. He spent several minutes running around, waving the flag and greeting fans before returning to the stage. The crowd responded with huge energy, singing loudly, jumping and waving their hands.

He finished with 12 to 12, sending the audience into one final burst of energy and proving that his rapidly growing catalogue can already fill a festival stage.

Dave’s set brought another major shift in scale. Performing on The Grid, he brought out Central Cee, KEO and James Blake as special guests throughout the performance. Each appearance added another dimension to the set, but Dave remained at its centre, carrying the performance with his own delivery and stage presence.

Then it was time for RAYE to close the second day.

Her headline performance began with Escapism., immediately launching into one of the songs the crowd had been waiting for. But the opening of the set was not simply about recreating the sound of her biggest hits. RAYE arrived with a live orchestra and band, giving the first part of the performance a richer, slower and more sophisticated feel.

She then performed The WhatsApp Shakespeare live for the first time. RAYE admitted that she puts a lot of words into her songs, making them difficult to perform live, and after her first attempt she stopped and started again because she wanted it to be perfect. The restart showed just how much importance she placed on getting the performance right.

The set continued to move between musical styles, with the live-band and jazz influences eventually giving way to more club-oriented moments. But before the full dancefloor atmosphere arrived, RAYE slowed things down again with I Know You’re Hurting.

The moment became one of the most visually striking of the entire day. Across the crowd, people raised the lights on their phones, creating a sea of lights beneath the main stage. What could have been a quiet, intimate song became a collective experience, with thousands of people sharing the moment together.

From there, RAYE shifted the mood again, moving into the more energetic side of her catalogue and turning The Grid into a huge dancefloor.

The family connection that had appeared earlier in the day returned when RAYE brought her sisters Amma and Absolutely onto the stage for Joy. Having watched both sisters perform earlier, seeing the three of them together in front of the main-stage crowd became one of the most special moments of the set.

But perhaps the most meaningful part of RAYE’s performance came when she spoke about her journey to the festival.

She explained that six or seven years ago she had tried to get booked for the Reading Festival and had been turned down. She tried the following year again and was rejected once more. Now, she was standing on the same festival’s main stage as a headliner.

Her message to the crowd was simple: keep chasing your dreams.

It gave the performance an emotional weight beyond the music itself. RAYE wasn’t simply celebrating a headline slot; she was celebrating the years of work and persistence that had made the moment possible.

After moving through the slower live-band moments, emotional ballads and full club energy, RAYE saved the song everyone was waiting for until the very end.

WHERE IS MY HUSBAND! closed the set, bringing Saturday’s performances to an enormous singalong and giving RAYE the kind of finale a headline set demands.

Day Two moved constantly between different kinds of live performance. Fliss and Ruby Roberts placed their vocals at the centre of their sets, while Amma combined singing with a playful connection to the crowd. Cruz Beckham & The Breakers brought live instrumentation and guitar playing to The Canopy, Maisie Peters balanced music with humour, and JADE delivered a full pop production complete with dancers and fan-led visuals.

Sombr turned The Grid into a miniature New York and proved himself as both an energetic performer and a strong live vocalist, while Dave brought a succession of guests onto the stage before finishing alone with Raindance.

And then there was RAYE.

Her headline performance brought together almost everything that had defined the day: musicianship, spectacle, humour, vulnerability, family and a crowd willing to sing every word back. Most importantly, it gave Saturday a sense of progression — from artists establishing themselves across the festival’s stages to an artist who had spent years trying to reach the top of the bill finally standing there.

Reading’s second day may have been soaked from beginning to end, but musically it was anything but washed out.