Florence + The Machine Urge Fans to Put Phones Away for an Uninterrupted Reading 2026 Performance

Florence + The Machine headlined the Reading Festival for the first time on August 30, 2026. The full setlist and accompanying footage are provided below.

The band took the main stage – now branded The Grid – at Little John’s Farm just before 8 p.m., preceding Sunday’s headliners Chase & Status.

It marked Florence Welch’s first appearance at Reading since 2012, following a headline set on her birthday at Leeds Festival the previous day (August 28).

The performance concluded their “Everybody Scream” tour, which began with a series of UK and European arena shows in February, continued across North America, and returned for the summer festival season.

Welch delivered a high‑energy show, moving dynamically across the large stage and leading sing‑alongs to songs such as “Rabbit Heart (Raise It Up)” and “You Got the Love”.

She recounted that Reading was “the first festival I ever wanted to go to,” recalling her father taking her when she was 14. “This is my childhood dream, so thank you so much.”

IDLES guitarist Mark Bowen joined her for “One of the Greats,” a song the pair wrote together and recorded in a single take. Bowen had previously appeared with Welch on the tour’s Belfast opening night and later at Madison Square Garden.

As rain fell, the band performed “Dog Days Are Over,” prompting one of the night’s most enthusiastic crowd reactions. Florence asked the audience to “put your phones the fuck away” and join a brief ritual, explaining that filming the song would diminish the experience and questioning whether that was why they had come. During the final chorus the crowd leapt together with arms raised.

Florence and the Machine live at Reading Festival pic.twitter.com/cvG09xeJa3

— Anthony Hacking (@Anthony_Hacking) August 30, 2026

FINAL #everybodyscreamtour dress is BLACK for Reading pic.twitter.com/RPydghaC8V

— K (@kay_m_sea) August 30, 2026

Florence + The Machine’s Reading 2026 setlist was:

‘Everybody Scream’
‘Shake It Out’
‘Which Witch’
‘Spectrum’
‘Rabbit Heart (Raise It Up)’
‘You Got the Love’
‘Howl’
‘What Kind of Man’
‘Heaven Is Here’
‘One of the Greats’
‘Buckle’
‘Sympathy Magic’
‘Dog Days Are Over’
‘Free’

‘Everybody Scream’ arrived last October as Florence + The Machine’s sixth studio album and their first since 2022’s ‘Dance Fever.’ Welch revealed at the time that the record was partly shaped by the ectopic pregnancy and emergency surgery that nearly took her life during the Dance Fever tour in 2023.

“The closest I came to making life was the closest I came to death,” she said last year. “And I felt like I had stepped through this door, and it was just full of women, screaming.”

“Are you ready to move?!” – Florence Welch celebrated her birthday at Leeds, ripping through ‘Spectrum’ with a lively crowd #RandL26 #FlorenceandTheMachine #FlorenceWelch pic.twitter.com/happr6q94z

— NME (@NME) August 29, 2026

NME awarded ‘Everybody Scream’ five stars, describing it as “a tempestuous record, one that stays with you longer than the rage and anguish which, here, is as fleeting as it is striking.”

Welch’s connection to Reading stretches back to 2008, when she first performed at the festival. She returned the following year to open the event with an unannounced two‑song set on the BBC Introducing Stage. The festival was also the first she attended as a fan at age 14, a memory she recalled in a 2012 interview.

Florence + The Machine first performed at Reading in 2008, before returning the following year to open the festival with an unannounced two‑song appearance on the BBC Introducing Stage.

In the intervening years, Welch has become an established festival headliner. Florence + The Machine famously stepped in for Foo Fighters at Glastonbury 2015 after Dave Grohl broke his leg, with their Pyramid Stage set including a cover of “Times Like These.”

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