Check out Fontaines D.C.’s setlist from emotional Reading 2026 headline performance

    Grian Chatten of Fontaines D.C. performs at Reading Festival, 2026. CREDIT: Andy Ford for NME

    Fontaines D.C. headlined Reading Festival 2026 last night – check out all the highlights below.

    • READ MORE: Fontaines D.C.‘s ‘Marianne’ sets a bold new cinematic scene in their search for escape

    The band made their debut as headliners on the festival’s main stage – now known as The Grid – last night (August 28), and will play again tonight in Leeds. Closing out the first night of the festival, they followed a set from co-headliner Charli XCX.

    Fans had to wait about half an hour for their set to start due to a delay thought to be caused by tech issues, which reportedly led the band to cut ‘Big’, ‘Hurricane Laughter’, and another new track, ‘Happy For You’, from the original setlist.

    After a late start, they stormed through ‘Boys in the Better Land’, ‘Here’s the Thing’, ‘Nabokov’ and ‘Marianne’ – the latter a recently debuted new track. Addressing the crowd after ‘Big Shot’, frontman Grian Chatten told fans: “It’s been a very hard time for us the last couple of months, and it’s nice to be back here”.

    Their headline slot comes after the death of their manager Trevor Dietz, who they described as “the sixth member of the band”. Their first performance since his passing was at the BBC’s final live session at Maida Vale, in an equally emotive performance earlier this month.

    Bassist Conor Deegan explained that the track had initially been discarded from the new album until the late Dietz told them they were “absolute lunatics” for leaving it out, and the song has now been dedicated to him. It got its first outing at Spain’s Baluarte de la Candelaria, where they also played another new song in ‘Six Shot Morning’, which appeared later in their Reading set.

    They closed out the set with the Grammy-nominated ‘Starbuster’ from their fourth album, ‘Romance‘, which they’re set to follow up with ‘Dopamine Chamber‘ in October.

    Check back at NME for a full review.