Reading & Leeds Festival may be over for another year, but there is still plenty to catch up on. BBC iPlayer now has performances and highlights from the 2026 festivals available on demand, including sets from Florence + The Machine, Fontaines D.C., RAYE, Dave, Charli XCX and Chase & Status.

BBC Music covered the festival across the weekend from Friday, 28 August to Sunday, 30 August, with Sian Eleri and Jack Saunders introducing performances from Reading alongside additional coverage across BBC One, Radio 1, 6 Music, BBC Sounds and the BBC Music YouTube channel.

How Can You Watch Reading and Leeds Festival 2026 on BBC iPlayer?

Reading & Leeds Festival performances and highlights are available to watch through BBC iPlayer for 30 days after the festival.

The weekend coverage includes Friday headline sets from Charli XCX and Fontaines D.C., followed by Dave and RAYE on Saturday and Florence + The Machine and Chase & Status on Sunday. Viewers can also catch other performances and highlights from across the festival rather than only the main headline sets.

BBC One broadcast four special programmes across the weekend, while selected performances and individual tracks are also available through BBC Music on YouTube.

Which Reading and Leeds 2026 Performances Are Available?

There was a huge mix across the three days, with this year’s bill combining established headliners with some of the artists quickly moving towards those slots themselves.

Fontaines D.C. celebrated their first Reading headline appearance with an emotional set that included a tribute to their late manager Trevor Dietz, while also beginning the live chapter around their forthcoming album Dopamine Chamber. Dave delivered another major headline moment on Saturday, bringing out James Blake, Kano and Central Cee during his set.

Sunday belonged to Florence + The Machine and Chase & Status, with Florence Welch celebrating her 40th birthday during the weekend. Her festival set brought favourites including “Spectrum”, “You’ve Got the Love” and “Rabbit Heart” back into the show alongside material from Everybody Scream.

Charli XCX and RAYE were among the other major headline performances across the weekend, while JADE brought plenty of pop to the main stage with a set including “Midnight Cowboy”, Little Mix track “Wasabi” and “Angel of My Dreams”.

There were plenty of smaller moments worth catching up on too. Jamie T opened Reading with a surprise appearance, while artists including ADÉLA, Slayyyter, Violet Grohl, Finessekid and Westside Cowboy were among those drawing attention across the festival’s other stages.

Can You Listen to Reading and Leeds Festival 2026 on BBC Sounds?

BBC radio coverage is also available through BBC Sounds, with Radio 1 and 6 Music carrying festival content across the weekend. From Monday, 31 August, 6 Music’s Indie Forever stream is also airing an hour of Reading Festival headline sets each day from 12pm until 1pm. The schedule combines new performances with archive favourites, including Florence + The Machine and Fontaines D.C. from 2026 alongside Nirvana’s famous 1992 Reading set, Arctic Monkeys from 2022 and The 1975 from 2023.

Reading and Leeds 2026 Comes to an End

This year’s festivals brought a number of changes to both sites, with new stages and spaces added alongside a line-up that gave plenty of room to newer artists. Reading also started in particularly unexpected fashion when Jamie T was added at the last minute and opened the main stage on Friday.

Across the weekend, the headline slots showed just how broad Reading & Leeds has become, moving between Fontaines D.C., Charli XCX, Dave, RAYE, Florence + The Machine and Chase & Status. There were also breakthrough sets further down the bill, making the weekend as much about who might headline in a few years as those already at the top.

For CultureCues, there were far too many good sets happening across the weekend to catch everything live, so we are very happy to have 30 days to work our way through the BBC iPlayer coverage. Florence + The Machine, Fontaines D.C., RAYE, Dave and Charli XCX are all high on our catch-up list, and there are plenty of smaller performances we missed completely. The festival may be finished, but our Reading & Leeds weekend clearly is not.

Reading and Leeds Festival 2026 performances and highlights are available to watch on BBC iPlayer.