Some festivals run like clockwork and as a result fade quickly from your memory.
WORDS John Bownas, PICTURES Sara-Louise Bowrey
2000trees 2026 on the other hand lost a headliner, roasted several thousand people under a Gloucestershire sun that melted tent pegs the way Uri Geller used to disfigure spoons, and still crowdsurfed away into the sunset more loved than ever.
And again, as ever, the early release tickets for 2027 have flown out of the door… if you’ve been before or haven’t yet made the pilgramage, what are you waiting for… joing the waiting list NOW.
We’ve waded through the huge amount of coverage for 2026 — notably Kerrang!, Louder Than War, Punktastic, Dork, MetalTalk, eFestivals, Moshville, Out Of Rage, Scene Music Media, The Soundboard, but plenty more — and it turns out our own take on the weekend wasn’t just heatstroke talking. Don Broco outgrew their emergency billing. Funeral For A Friend landed the weekend’s biggest emotional gut-punch. The Forest Stage stayed the heart of the site. And the smaller names kept threatening to steal the whole thing out from under the headliners.
There’s a smaller story in here too. Before the festival we picked six acts worth your time — Native James, Karen Dió, Lemonsuckr, Twat Union, Scustin and Lambrini Girls — not because they were the buzziest names on social feeds, but because we’d already watched them win over rooms or small festival stages. Four of them got strong press afterward. Lambrini Girls withdrew for serious health reasons. But Scustin, who by our judgement played one of the most joyful sets of the weekend, barely got a mention anywhere.
Go figure…so we’ll come back to that.
First, though the weather. Again.
2000trees became 2000degrees
No review from this year’s festival could either help but open with the heat or eventually give up on describing the music and start describing the search for shade instead. Kerrang! went with “gloriously, punishingly skin melting“; Scene Music Media nailed how every patch of shade instantly became prime real estate.
It wasn’t just background colour to the band — it shaped the weekend the way mud more regularly does in the UK; minus the sliding around but plus a lot of quiet wondering whether your internal organs were slowly being poached. Shade was tradeable currency. The Forest came into its own as it doubled as both a venue and an enormous natural parasol. Tents meanwhile turned into air fryers, and the main arena spent three days doing a decent impression of a George Forman barbecue grill.
The bands who won the day were the ones who could revive a crowd of rapidly desiccating rock fans and get them moving again. Mariachi El Bronx managed it for a lot of people — brass, swagger and widescreen party energy that Scene Music Media summed up as “one enormous dusty fiesta.” For the duration of their set this normally quiet corner of Gloucestershire became a place where everyone became fans of the mighty trumpet, and the heady scent of tequila was strong in the air.
The heat of 2026 is now part of the new Trees folklore — a shared enemy, an unofficial extra headliner, and the basis for a whole new round of competitive suffering stories. ‘You thought Thursday was bad? We watched a full set in The Cave’.
People hand out medals for less.
Don Broco pick up the emergency bat-phone
Alkaline Trio pulling out could have cast a long shadow over Thursday — though by that point, a long shadow was exactly what most wilting punters were after. Cancellations rarely land cleanly. People travel for specific bands, dust off old tour shirts, and the internet only needs a few seconds to decide a whole festival is ruined because someone has bronchitis.
Instead, Don Broco’s arrival turned into one of the weekend’s warmest stories. eFestivals called them “by no means a consolation booking,” and MetalTalk talked about how they perfectly suited to the role. They didn’t feel parachuted in, because the relationship with Trees was already there before they played a note — less “frantically hiring a substitute,” more suddenly remembering your brother-in-law used to be in Take That after the wedding band’s van broke down on the motorway.
That’s where Trees has the edge over festivals held together by three enormous names, some cable ties, and a roll of gaffa tape. Its identity is spread across returning bands, smaller stages, Forest sessions and years of shared history between performers and crowd. The headliners matter — they’re just not the only thing that counts.
The undercards came up Top Trumps
The clearest theme across the reviews was how the less well known names mattered just as much as the big ones. House Of Protection, Static Dress, Highdrive, Silo, TOOTH, Reclus.É, Call Me Amour, BUDS, Cowboy Hunters, Pinkshift and Mouth Culture all got tagged as discoveries, breakout acts or future headliners — Kerrang! described “weirdo young lions coming to claim the throne.”
At most festivals, the lower half of the bill is packing material — something to half-listen to while you queue for lunch. At Trees it’s a reason to turn up early. The festival puts new bands in spaces and on stages where they can actually look important.
The old Neue Stage became the Marshall Stage this year, joining The Cave and Axiom as another close, pressurised space alongside the Forest. Some acts need polish and distance. Others need a crowd so close that the boundary between bands and fans breaks down at a quantum level. Trees seems to understand the difference and their security facilitate safe interactions rather than some events where it’s all about holding back the tide.
Native James is done waiting
Of our six picks, Native James got the loudest reaction in the post-event press coverage. We’d flagged him after catching a set in the woods at Bearded Theory — a mash-up of grime, metal, rap and punk that felt built for any festival which laps up anything that knocks down the usual genre fences. That assessment turned out to be a little conservative.
Kerrang! didn’t hedge, calling him “properly galvanising” and past his “one to watch” status by now. MetalTalk named him breakout star of the weekend, with the crowd eating out of his hand and two walls of death tearing through the Forest. Amped Magazine compared him to a wild animal feeding off the audience.
This wasn’t wizardry on our part — Native James had already proved himself in smaller rooms, and Trees simply put a much bigger crowd in front of him. Reviewers kept reaching for the same words: force, control, ownership. Nobody was filing him under “promising newcomer” by the end of that set.
Karen Dió fires up the Forest with some Hastings spirit
Karen Dió was another early pick, and one we’d been watching closely thanks to her Hastings and St Leonards connections since her move from Brazil. Her mix of pop instinct and punk energy grins at you first, then pokes you sharply in the eye.
Kerrang! caught her turning the heat into a fizzing set and summed the whole thing up in one word: “Massive.” Devolution found her full of confidence, and Summer Festival Guide watched the barrier give way during ‘Sick Ride,’ concluding her star is on the rise.
None of that particularly surprised us — anyone who’d seen her before (including at last year’s Trees) knew she could hold a room. The real question was whether her momentum is still picking up steam. Karen Dió didn’t shrink. She looks to be sitting right on the edge of wider recognition and sets like this — in front of people who’d maybe never heard her name — are exactly what push an artist over that edge.
Those of us who’ve watched her reach this point can allow ourselves a small, knowing nod.
Lemonsuckr make crowd control an art form
Lemonsuckr were always easy to recommend and hard to describe without making them sound like just another arty noise troupe. We said beforehand they might drag their songs off the stage and sweat all over the crowd. Turns out we were being too polite.
Moshville’s writer went in blind and came out with the line that matters most: that a live show can, occasionally, change everything. Punk In Focus ran with “Lemonsuckr Throw Crowd Control Out the Window,” describing frontman Guy Ferris flat on his back in the middle of the audience while security tried to work out whether anyone was technically still performing. The same writer had seen them in 2025 and called this year’s set immeasurably improved, ending with a plea for a Main Stage slot next year.
That’s why we bother looking down the bill. Predicting a household name will deliver a decent set isn’t hard. The fun is finding the act that turns an unpromising afternoon slot into the thing people are still talking about while taking their tent down. Lemonsuckr didn’t just fill the time before the next band — they made the slot theirs.
Twat Union bring brass, blood and bodily admin
Nobody was pitching Twat Union as gentle picnic music. Periods, UTIs, misogyny, disappointing sex, and the sheer admin of existing in a body the world wasn’t built around — there’s brass, there are costumes, and there are jokes with small, uncomfortable stones hidden inside the soles of their shoes.
The Soundboard called the set funny, provocative and relevant, singling out Kate MacDonald’s bloodstained prop during ‘Period Sex’ and Alice Rivers leading a spot of punk-country line dancing, before landing on a simple verdict: more like this, please. eFestivals wrote about the songs balancing humour against genuine frustration at what it’s like being young women in a world that isn’t built for them.
The comedy isn’t bolted onto the songs to make the difficult stuff go down easier — it’s how the band operates. The jokes get those subjects into the room before anyone can hide behind the sofa. Twat Union don’t pause the party to deliver the message; they commandeer the party, crank up the brass and write the message across the walls.
Occasionally in fake blood.
Lambrini Girls and the gap they left behind
Lambrini Girls were the one pick who never made it to the stage. They withdrew after Phoebe Lunny’s brain surgery, and nothing about this festival matters more than her health and recovery.
Their absence did, though, feed into a wider conversation about the bill. Dork raised concerns about the visibility of women and non-binary artists at 2000trees, arguing that losing Lambrini Girls made an existing imbalance harder to ignore. That criticism deserves more than a defensive shrug. Trees gets plenty of credit for its openness and sense of community, and that reputation shouldn’t act as a forcefield the moment someone points out where it could do better.
Representation can’t rest on one or two prominent bookings — if pulling a single act makes an imbalance suddenly visible, it was already there. That doesn’t erase everything good about the weekend, and it isn’t unique to this festival; the routes onto any bill are shaped by problems running through the wider industry, from access and development to who gets early support and attention. But festivals still make choices.
Trees has built its reputation partly on nurturing new talent, and part of that is keeping an honest eye on who’s actually being given the chance — and whether everyone can see a realistic route to the bigger stages.
Scustin and that strange sound of media silence
Then there’s Scustin. We picked the Irish band as unmissable — witty, character-driven songs sitting somewhere between indie rock, funk and a late-night pub conversation that’s somehow recruited an excellent bass player. Frontman Larry works less like a conventional singer and more like a roaming narrator; no two sets arrive in quite the same shape. They’re funny without letting the jokes bury the musicianship, loose without turning sloppy, theatrical without tipping into drama-school coursework.
By rights they should be catnip for festival reviewers. Instead: barely a mention. No “discovery of the weekend” line, no meaty paragraph, nothing we can pull out and quote here. They played, entertained a room full of people, and slipped straight through a crack in the press tent floor.
Scheduling probably explains part of it — reviewers can’t be everywhere, and every published review is also a record of what its writer had to miss. Momentum explains some more: bands already generating buzz are more likely to end up on a reviewer’s schedule, and once a few outlets tip the same act, everyone else wants a look, until the same handful of bands get independently “discovered” across half the weekend’s coverage.
Scustin are also harder to sum up in two hurried sentences. A wall of death gives you an instant image; so does a huge breakdown or someone hanging off a lighting rig. A hundred strangers gradually won over by a comic song about some peculiar corner of modern life takes a bit more explaining — and crowd-pleasing tends to get undervalued anyway, as if entertaining people is somehow the easy option. It isn’t. Plenty of bands can get a crowd moving. Far fewer can make people who arrived knowing nothing feel like the set belongs to them.
Whatever happened, Scustin’s absence from the coverage is a useful reminder that “what the press are saying” and “everything worth seeing” aren’t the same thing. A review only tells you what one writer happened to catch — it can’t tell you what was happening everywhere else on site. Scustin remain on our must-see list for good reason. Go spend some time with their songs, and more importantly, go see them live — then you’ll understand exactly what we mean.
BUDS and their long road to the Main Stage
BUDS opening the Main Stage turned up in several reviews and became one of the clearest examples of why Trees inspires this level of loyalty. This wasn’t a developing band handed an early slot as a favour — it was a band that had genuinely grown up through the culture around the festival, moving from audience members and campfire performers to the biggest stage on site. Rock Sound’s pre-festival feature put it simply: it feels like they belong there.
That word — belong — sits underneath nearly every review. It’s why Don Broco never felt like emergency plumbing. It’s why returning bands got such enormous reactions. It’s why unfamiliar acts were given proper attention instead of treated as background noise before the famous names showed up. Out Of Rage wrote about strangers becoming mates within minutes.
Every festival claims to have a community. Often that means two people hugging next to a branded inflatable while someone from marketing lines up a photo. At Trees, it seems to mean something real: bands return, audience members become performers, smaller acts move through the stages and turn up in Forest sessions alongside their friends. BUDS reaching the Main Stage felt less like a booking decision and more like another chapter in a story the crowd were already entranced by.
Funeral For A Friend and the emotional centre of the weekend
If one set provided the weekend’s emotional peak, it was Funeral For A Friend. Punktastic described a set radiating with love from every corner, and Holding Absence singer Lucas Woodland joined the band on stage, threading their history together with a younger generation of artists and fans. This wasn’t old music dusted off for display — it was alive and back in circulation.
Reunion shows can easily become museum pieces, bands recreating an earlier era while the audience spends an hour visiting younger versions of themselves. There’s nothing wrong with that — everyone deserves occasional access to the soundtrack of their worst haircut. But the strongest returning bands at Trees feel connected to what’s happening now rather than sealed off from it.
Arcane Roots’ return after eight years was another major talking point. Marmozets came back with their power fully intact, though they sadly imploded shortly afterwards. Mallory Knox, The Wildhearts and The Xcerts all drew on the deep affection built through their history with the festival. Trees lets people celebrate the music that shaped them without pretending nothing worthwhile has happened since — older names and newer acts sharing stages, microphones, audiences and, this year especially, bottles of factor 50.
The Forest remains the heart of 2000trees
The Forest Stage kept its special status and drew praise across almost every review — Louder Than War called it a perfect cocoon amongst the trees. This year it also had the handy secondary function of stopping people from combusting.
But the shade’s only part of it. The Forest closes the gap between artist and audience: songs built for volume get pulled apart and scaled down, musicians talk more between tracks, crowds somehow listen differently. Every festival wants a hidden spiritual centre, and most lose the magic the moment everyone knows exactly where it is and a programme lists every set. The Forest hasn’t — it’s now one of the festival’s biggest draws and sets there still feel discovered rather than delivered to order. Maybe it’s the trees themselves, maybe it’s the closeness, maybe people just behave differently once they realise shouting through an acoustic song in a woodland clearing makes you look like a particularly insensitive woodland animal. Whatever the reason, it keeps feeling like the part of 2000trees where familiar songs can briefly turn private.
No festival can dodge every bullet
The response to 2000trees 2026 was overwhelmingly positive, but not every review turned up waving bunting. Dork’s concerns about the representation of women and non-binary artists were the clearest piece of criticism aimed at the festival itself. The Soundboard was more sceptical about a few individual sets, questioning whether some developing acts had been moved onto bigger stages before they were ready.
Good — a festival roundup where everyone agrees soon collapses into the same handful of phrases: great community, great atmosphere, great bands, see you next year is contrived. If Trees prides itself on nurturing new music, then questions about who gets promoted, who’s ready, and who gets left behind aren’t side issues. They’re central to what the festival claims to be doing. It should be possible to call an event excellent and, in the next breath, ask it to do better.
Anything else is just advertising.
So what were the press actually saying?
Read enough of this coverage and 2000trees starts to look remarkably difficult to knock over. The heat shaped the weekend without beating it. A headline cancellation became a story about resilience rather than collapse. Returning bands drew enormous emotional reactions, new artists grabbed their opportunities, and the Forest carried on doing whatever peculiar woodland magic it does.
Our own picks held up well too. Native James moved past “one to watch” and became one of the weekend’s genuine breakout names. Karen Dió’s coverage got distilled by Kerrang! into one satisfyingly large word. Lemonsuckr left reviewers openly discussing a Main Stage future. Twat Union delivered exactly the wit, brass and bodily rebellion we’d hoped for. Lambrini Girls were forced out by serious health circumstances, their absence sharpening a conversation about representation that Trees needs to keep having.
And Scustin? They remain the loose thread — a band built to charm festival crowds that appears to have done exactly that without convincing much of the press to write it down. That says more about the limits of festival coverage than it does about the band.
2000trees 2026 will be remembered for Don Broco answering the emergency call, Funeral For A Friend triggering a mass outpouring of affection, Native James tearing through the Forest, and several thousand people surviving a weather event with a personal grudge against anyone wearing black or denim. But no single set owned the story. Trees remains bigger than its headliners — a place where old names come home, new artists can suddenly find themselves heading somewhere much larger, and audiences still wander into tents to watch bands they’ve never heard of.
The press caught most of it. We named a few winners early. And Scustin slipped out through the side door, laughing all the way to the pub.
A weekend in photos
WEDNESDAY
THURSDAY
FRIDAY
SATURDAY
