Here’s what Linkin Park played when they made history headlining Download 2026

    Linkin Park

    Linkin Park closed out Download Festival 2026 last night, making history in the process as they became the first female-fronted band to headline – check out what went down below.

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    Last night (Sunday June 14), Mike Shinoda, Emily Armstrong and co. headlined the last night of the Donington Park festival, marking a UK exclusive for the band, who last performed at the event in 2014, fronted by the late Chester Bennington.

    They reformed in 2024, seven years after Bennington took his own life, in a move that proved incredibly divisive at the time, with Bennington’s son Jaime accusing remaining members of “quietly erasing” his father’s “life and legacy”. Choosing Armstrong as his successor was equally controversial among some fans, who pointed to her alleged ties to the Church of Scientology and previous support of convicted rapist Danny Masterson.

    In the wake of those allegations, Armstrong distanced herself from Masterson, stressing that she did not condone any “abuse or violence against women” and had only attended an early hearing in his rape trial “as an observer”.

    While controversial, her addition to the band made her the first woman to headline Download on Sunday night, which some fans described as “breaking barriers”.

    Nodding to the milestone, Shinoda joked the crowd that Armstrong “hates this kind of attention”, and invited the crowd to form an women-only mosh pit for ‘Two Faced’ to honour her.