Festival News: Download 2025 is on its way. Three brand new headliners, over 90 announced bands
Download 2025 is on its way. Three brand new headliners, over 90 announced bands, and another monumental weekend — all that and more.
It’s here, ladies and gentlemen. The announcement you’ve all been waiting for — if you’re metal-inclined anyway. The people over at Download have just released their first wave of over 90 artists, all due to descend on Donnington come June. And, for the first time in a while, all three headliners are first timers.
Opening up the weekend comes a band that everyone knows, and quite honestly it’s a surprise that it’s taken them this long to come over; they’ve certainly been big enough for a while, with ‘American Idiot’ coming out over twenty years ago. That’s right — Green Day are making their Download festival debut as your first headliners.
Closing out the weekend comes the leashed freaks, the raging nu-metal favourites of Korn, back over after their triumphant set at Gunnersbury Park a few months ago, and back to Donnington after sub-headlining for Biffy Clyro back in 2022.
And then, slap-dash in the middle, comes the metal music success story, the fable that aging metalheads will tell to their kids the first time they pick up a guitar and shoot for the stars: Sleep Token. A firm favourite of audiences (and TikTokers) worldwide, it’s only fitting that the masked vessels of Sleep take their place at the helm of UK’s premier metal festival after news of their sold-out arena dates this December.
Joining them come a whole host of bands, old and new — and, in the case of Frank Carter and (most of) the Sex Pistols, a bit of both. There’s Weezer, ahead of their show with Deftones in Crystal Palace later that month. Bullet For My Valentine, ahead of their arena tour with Trivium in the new year. Jimmy Eat World, Don Broco, Spiritbox. The Darkness, Within Temptation, Steel Panther. Cradle Of Filth and Lorna Shore, Apocalyptica and Sikth. And also McFly, evidently (good-naturedly) seething at Busted’s surprisingly wholesale success earlier this year.
Further down the lineup, you have Airbourne and Whitechapel, Dayseeker and Northlane, Jinjer and Mallory Knox. Polaris, Bleed From Within and Meshuggah, Eagles Of Death Metal, Poppy and Starset. Blackpool-based Boston Manor and the Norwegian “deathpunk” of Turbonegro. A smattering of bands from all tastes and proclivities, from all over the globe, all united under one, hopefully-not-torrential-rain-cloud-covered-this-year-for-the-love-of-God English sky.
And, rounding out the other fifty or so names out of the 90+ announcement, there’s too many to easily go through. Personal highlights include Dead Poet Society, Eivør, Harpy, Paddy Considine’s Riding The Low, SiM and Vower, but let’s just say that there will be plenty of bands to keep everyone happy.
Except possibly the Hardcore kids - with Outbreak announced yesterday as moving to the Download weekend, including an additional day in London on the Friday, there might be a bit of a musical tug-of-war going on between the two festivals — let’s hope that sharing is caring works for festival bookers too!
With the Mastercard Presale already up-and-running, and tickets being available everywhere from Thursday, it looks like the clock’s tick, tick, ticking away for if you want to be there. Time to make the call.
Words by James O’Sullivan
