Dave live at Reading Festival 2026 review: a headline set for the history books

It’s seven years since Dave picked a lad called Alex out of the audience and made Glastonbury history, but it feels like many, many more. A lot has happened since that mind-bogglingly brilliant performance of ‘Thiago Silva’ – for the planet and for Dave himself, who broke America with the massive Central Cee team-up ‘Sprinter’ and responded to his career level-up by retreating from the limelight. The result was last year’s ‘The Boy Who Played the Harp’, a deeply introspective album that saw him grapple with fame and question his calling even as he scaled new heights of lyrical dexterity.

As the 28-year-old bounds onto the main stage at Reading Festival for his co-headliner slot (shared with RAYE) on the Saturday night, though, it soon becomes clear that he’s in party mode. During an opening salvo that packs in the hardboiled ‘Verdansk’, a slinky ‘Clash’ and a groovy ‘Location’, he floods the stage in yellow smoke, conducts the crowd who are singing along and deploys pyro that warms you even from behind the second barrier.

Dressed simply in a black boiler suit, the top half of which he soon wraps around his waist to reveal a fitted jumper, he looks momentarily overwhelmed, smiling bashfully at the huge, densely packed audience that seems to stretch for miles back into the distance.

There’s little time to take it all in, though, as that audience punctuates each track with a chant of “Ohhh Thiago Silva” set to the tune of ‘Seven Nation Army’. Dave’s guitarist responds by launching into the track’s swaggering riff, inciting a moment of sheer pandemonium. “I’ve got this song called ‘Thiago Silva’, the rapper teases. “If you want me to do it, Reading…?” The ensuing performance should go down in the festival’s history, as thousands of fans rattle off every single word with him.

In fact, this infectiously joyous set features a remarkable number of moments that should go down in Reading history. Dave brings James Blake for an aching ‘Both Sides of a Smile’, spars with Kano over ‘Chapter 16’ and creates more pandemonium when Central Cee strolls onstage for a red-hot run through ‘Sprinter’. The enormity of the occasion is evidently not lost on the main man, who marvels that he first played the festival’s 1Xtra tent in 2017 and promises he doesn’t take his ascent to the top slot “for granted”. This was yet another mind-bogglingly brilliant performance from an artist at the top of his game.

Dave played:

‘Verdansk’
‘Clash’
‘Location’
‘Both Sides of a Smile’ (with James Blake)
‘Screwface Capital’
‘Professor X’
‘Funky Friday’
‘Thiago Silva’ (preceded by ‘Seven Nation Army’ intro)
‘Wanna Know’
‘No Words’
‘3 P’s Freestyle’ (with Kano)
‘Chapter 16’ (with Kano)
‘Trojan Horse’
‘The Boy Who Played the Harp’
‘Sprinter’ (with Central Cee)
‘Starlight’
‘Raindance’