All Points East 2026: Six Days, Six Festivals
Photo Credit: @khaliphotography
All Points East returns to Victoria Park this August with six ticketed days that feel less like one festival and more like several completely different events sharing the same patch of East London. Jorja Smith and Tems open the festival, followed by Lorde, an Outbreak takeover led by Deftones, two nights from Tyler, The Creator and a closing headline set from Twenty One Pilots. Between the two weekends, the park remains open for the free In The Neighbourhood programme.
Unlike most festivals, All Points East does not ask you to commit to one musical identity. One day can move through modern R&B and jungle, the next through art-pop, before the park is handed over to hardcore, hip-hop and alternative rock. There is something for almost everyone here, although probably not all on the same day.
A Festival With Serious History
Since launching in 2018, All Points East has hosted a huge range of headline acts, from LCD Soundsystem, The xx and Björk, through to Bring Me The Horizon, Stormzy, RAYE and The Maccabees. That history has given the festival a reputation for lineups curated around a specific audience, rather than built by throwing every possible genre onto the same poster.
Jorja Smith and Tems Open the Festival
Friday 21 August begins with Jorja Smith and Tems, heading a day shaped around R&B, soul, Afrobeats and UK club culture. Nia Archives is one of the strongest names underneath them, bringing jungle production into a live setting that should suit Victoria Park perfectly. It is an opening day with plenty of range, but enough of a shared identity to feel deliberate rather than scattered.
Lorde’s Full-Circle Return
Saturday belongs to Lorde, returning to the festival eight years after appearing beneath The xx at its first edition. This time, she sits at the top of a modern pop lineup led by PinkPantheress. It is one of the most coherent days of the festival: emotional, slightly strange and built around artists whose audiences have grown as much through online culture as traditional radio. Expect excellent outfits, huge singalongs and at least one communal emotional breakdown.
Outbreak Takes Over
Any calm disappears on Sunday, when Deftones lead All Points East’s first Outbreak takeover. IDLES and Amyl and The Sniffers sit high on a bill that pulls together hardcore, punk, shoegaze and experimental music. All Points East has hosted heavier days before, but this feels like a genuine takeover rather than a rock headliner with a few loosely related support acts. Prepare for dust clouds.
Tyler, The Creator’s Two-Day Takeover
Tyler, The Creator becomes the first act in the festival’s history to headline two consecutive days, with each date given its own lineup. Friday looks like the more explosive of the pair, especially with Turnstile joining the bill. We caught the band at Depot Mayfield in Manchester, where “Depot Mayfield felt electrified” and their “raw, intimate energy made the show feel like an intimate gig at a dive bar.” Dropping that energy into the middle of a huge outdoor hip-hop day should make them one of the weekend’s most interesting bookings.
Saturday moves in a smoother direction, with Daniel Caesar sitting directly beneath Tyler, The Creator. Across the two days, it feels less like one artist playing twice and more like a festival-within-the-festival, built around two sides of the same creative world
Twenty One Pilots’ Festival World Tour Reaches London
Twenty One Pilots close All Points East on Sunday 30 August, almost a year after Tyler Joseph warned fans that the band would not be giving Breach a conventional world tour. While clarifying, “I’m not saying it’s our last tour ever,” he explained that, beyond “maybe some festivals next year,” the band did not know when they would tour again and apologised to fans outside the States for not giving Breach “a proper world tour.”
Instead, they have effectively built a festival world tour. Rather than taking Breach through the usual run of international arena dates, the band have carried the era overseas through major festival appearances, with All Points East now acting as its UK stop. For British fans, it may be the closest the album comes to receiving a full headline show on this side of the Atlantic.
Choosing Your Day
The biggest strength of All Points East 2026 is that each day has been allowed to develop its own identity. You do not necessarily attend the festival as a whole; you choose a lineup, enter its world and see where it takes you. With six very different headline shows and some of the strongest undercards of the summer, choosing just one day may be the hardest part.
