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Roskilde Festival is, of course, about music. We say that because it’s the easy answer, and because it sits right at the top of the poster. But the festival’s real spirit often lives everywhere else: in the mud, in the camps, in the queues, in the night, and on the walls you only notice once you stop sprinting after the next concert.
Clipse on Orange Scene should have been one of those bookings you later say you were right there for. Pusha T and Malice. The brothers. The myth. Coke rap with museum status and a still-fresh whiff of asphalt. But somewhere between the razor-sharp rhymes, the heavy beats, and an audience that wanted to be convinced, it all started to feel a bit like having the same hard-boiled text message read aloud 27 times.
Some concerts ask you to know the songs. Others just ask you to let go. Young Miko delivered a set where language quickly mattered less than rhythm, bass and the effortless confidence she brought to the stage. It was cool without feeling calculated, and that was exactly why it pulled you in.
Friday at Roskilde can be a strange beast. Some people are ready from the crack of dawn; others are still drifting around as if their bodies have only just realised they’re at a festival. Mille stood right in the middle of it all on Arena with a confidence that suited her. The concert needed a moment to pull the audience in, but once it found its space, there was plenty to like.
Roskilde had been wet, heavy, and grey all day. You could feel the rain in your clothes, in the mud, and in that slightly flattened festival energy that creeps in when the weather gets to call the shots for too long. But when Little Simz stepped onto Orange Scene on Thursday at 6 p.m., something shifted. The sun broke through, the crowd lifted, and the festival started breathing again.
I hadn’t expected to use the word cosy about Napalm Death. It feels almost like calling an angle grinder caring. But at Eos, something strange happened. In the middle of the noise, the growls and the political poison darts, Mark “Barney” Greenway stood there in blue braces looking like the kindest man in the world — right up until he opened his mouth and sounded like civilisation’s final coughing fit.
Rain poured down over Roskilde, and Arena was packed to the rafters. Some people sheltered under the tent canvas; others slowly soaked through without quite giving up. It could have turned into a heavy afternoon. Instead, Guldimund became a reminder of how much can happen when a concert doesn’t try to fill every corner, but simply dares to stay close.
David Byrne was one of those bookings at Roskilde that made the whole programme look smarter just by being there. A living legend, yes, but thankfully not in that museum-piece way, where you pay to watch a man reminisce about himself. At Arena, we got something stranger and better: a concert that behaved like a performance.
A Malk de Koijn concert always feels a little like a resurrection. They turn up every few years, say something about bananas, snails and the universe’s bad WiFi, and suddenly you’re reminded: right, Danish rap really can be its own planet.
Gorillaz should be a sensation. The virtual cartoon band. The myth. The big songs. The strange universe. The whole package. Instead, there I was at Roskilde, watching Damon Albarn wander around with his megaphone and thinking: is this still Gorillaz, or has someone just handed a British polymath Orange Stage as a summer house?
I’d actually meant to leave. Just catch the opening, feel the temperature, do the classic festival move where you pretend you’re a free person in control of your evening. But then Tobias Rahim was there. Gleaming, composed, and completely absurdly ready for Orange Stage.
There’s something almost thankless about being the first proper name on Orange Stage after the christening. The audience is still finding itself, its friends, its beer and the queue it has apparently chosen to devote its life to. Wolf Alice came on in the middle of it all and did something almost provocatively grown-up: they didn’t turn up the chaos. They gave us a breather.
Saturday is always a little special at a festival. The body is worn down, the voice has been sanded to a rusty nod, and by now you know the shortcuts between the stages a little too well. But that is also the day you stop chasing the schedule and let the festival come to you instead. And it did. Saturday brought one of the year’s most talked-about bookings, a reunion with real Californian punk, and a Copenhagen trio proving that you do not need big gimmicks to make Helviti boil.
From low gear to high gear in relentless heat. Hell’s flame closed in around us. Friday at Copenhell 2026 delivered Trivium in peak form, a collapsed anniversary show, and a festival balancing chaos and highlights.
Thursday was the day Copenhell really shifted into gear. The grounds were more tightly packed, the blood alcohol level a touch higher, and the festival started to look like itself. The bill ranged from modern metalcore with AI anxiety to Brazilian thrash and a man in a kilt playing guitar as if time had stopped existing.
Festival season is officially underway. There’s something special about the first day at Copenhell. The asphalt hasn’t yet been coated in four days’ worth of beer, your voice is still more or less intact, and the battle vests look almost freshly washed. Wednesday is the day when you have to remind yourself how to walk 25,000 steps with a pint in your hand. And this year’s opening certainly didn’t disappoint.
I hadn’t seen that Boiler Room set. Admitting it felt almost embarrassing, like turning up for an exam without having read the syllabus, but with sunglasses on and a Red Bull in hand. Still, I’d heard people say the sentence enough times for it to start sounding like a kind of entry requirement for Arena: “Have you seen that Boiler Room set?”
White Lies did a lot right at Tinderbox. They played neatly, sounded like a band in command of their dark British engine room, and brought the songs the crowd had come for. Even so, the concert never quite turned dangerous. It stood there in front of us, polished and orderly, but never got close enough.
Turboweekend took the stage after a day when the Tinderbox crowd had been hit with heat, storm, mud and a cancellation all at once. That takes a band with some heft to lift. And Turboweekend fought for it. The sound was strong, the energy was real, and the Danish lyrics had bite. But the concert never quite found the movement that could have turned something solid into something big.
Jess Glynne took the stage after a brutal spell of weather, with Tinderbox still trying to find its footing again. It was a thankless task, yes. But also a chance. She had the hits, the voice and the crowd in front of her. And yet the concert never quite became the release the square needed.
My worst nightmare has always been the try-hard festival uniform: cheap beer, mass singalongs, ’90s nostalgia and grown adults dancing as if their debit cards won’t be frozen until tomorrow. But at Festegnen, something annoying happened. It worked. Not all the time. Not without a few near-criminal detours. But enough that you had to admit Vestegnen has, in fact, gotten its own festival.
John Martin walked onstage as the man many people know best as the voice behind other people’s biggest moments. But at Festegnen, something funny happened: suddenly Swedish House Mafia almost felt like the feature on his concert. Not the other way around. It was big, warm, slightly absurd, and far more moving than I had expected.
You have to be careful about mocking Scooter. It sounds like a joke, but it isn’t. I mean that almost religiously. Because there you stand, grown-up, tired and more or less civilized, thinking you’ve developed into someone. And then H.P. Baxxter walks onstage, and your entire personality is reset by fire, hardstyle and German rave command.
There are concerts that don’t need to convince anyone. They only need to open slowly and let the audience step inside. The Minds of 99 at Heartland was that kind of concert. Not surprising. Not overdone. Just strong, clear, and carried by a summer night that almost did the work with them.
Four days of legends, nu-metal nostalgia, Swedish death metal and bands you either want to die on a hill for or have never quite understood. We’ve gathered the names, the chaos and the concerts that are likely to define this year’s Copenhell.
