Slam Dunk began as a club night at the legendary, now long gone Leeds venue The Cockpit in 2001. By 2006, however, it had grown into a one-day festival, headlined by none other than Fall Out Boy. That first proper edition drew a few thousand people to Leeds' Millennium Square. Twenty years later, it fills Temple Newsam in Leeds and Hatfield Park in Hertfordshire across a bank holiday weekend, with fifty acts across six stages and a crowd that, year after year, keeps coming back.
Over those two decades, the festival has put together a who's who of pop-punk, heavy metal and emo rock. Paramore played in 2007 before most people had caught up with how popular they were going to be. Panic! At The Disco, All Time Low and Jimmy Eat World all also passed through at various points in their careers.
Founder Ben Ray, who reflected ahead of the weekend that he had no idea the festival would reach this milestone when he started it, made no secret of wanting 2026 to feel like a proper celebration. The line-up reflected that ambition. Good Charlotte headlining, back in the UK for the first time since Alexandra Palace in 2019. Sublime making their first ever UK appearances. Taking Back Sunday performing Louder Now in full on its twentieth anniversary, a coincidental alignment with the festival's own milestone. Cartel doing the same with Chroma. Deaf Havana revisiting Fools and Worthless Liars. Multiple records, multiple anniversaries, all in one giant field in Leeds.
For 2026, Slam Dunk went heavier than ever, adding two new side-by-side stages dedicated entirely to metalcore, hardcore and post-hardcore – a trip when you walk through the festival for the first time thanks to the different sounds from different stages. The differences felt like attending two festivals on the same day. The heavier bill, Main Stage East had Knocked Loose headlining alongside Malevolence, Bury Tomorrow, Cancer Bats, Comeback Kid, the mysterious PRESIDENT, and more. At any given point across the afternoon there was a mosh pit forming somewhere down there.
Tonight Alive from Sydney, Australia were one of the early acts, and it was instantly obvious that frontwoman Jenna McDougall does not ease into a set, instead arriving at full volume. The band have spent years building a live reputation, and it shows in the way they carry themselves.
Credit: Laurent Swyngedauw @ The Mancunion
The Menzingers were a highlight of the afternoon. With their new album Everything I Ever Saw due in July, there was a sense of a band who know exactly where they stand right now. 'American You're Freaking Me Out' and 'After the Party' anchored a set of melodic singalongs that the crowd, largely millennial and largely sunburnt by this point in the day, sang back without hesitation.
Motion City Soundtrack were something else entirely. It was their first UK show in ten years, timed around last year's album The Same Old Wasted Wonderful World, and they played it like a band who had been waiting a long time to perform to their UK fan base. New tracks like 'Particle Physics' and 'She Will Disappear' landed with the confidence of songs the crowd already knew, and keyboardist Jesse Johnson was as animated as always. Looking back from the stage, the crowd stretched further than a band playing the smaller stage could ever expect, especially given that Sublime were on the main stage at around the same time.
Credit: Laurent Swyngedauw @ The Mancunion
Scott's Key Club, the indoor tented venue named in honour of Scott Hickinson and the Merrion Centre venue The Key Club, two legends in the alternative scene in Leeds, housed some of the most interesting bookings of the day. This stage was used to showcase upcoming, experimental talents. The Home Team, Vukovi and The Suicide Machines played here, before a closing set from Deaf Havana. For a band who have been Slam Dunk regulars across multiple editions, closing out the indoor stage on an anniversary year felt appropriate. The venue also ran a closing party until 11pm for anyone who was not ready to call it a night.
Goldfinger hit Main Stage West at 4pm, and wasted no time in making the most of it. Thirty years as a band, and lead singer John Feldmann spent a portion of the set acknowledging and being grateful for exactly that. Trumpet players from Reel Big Fish appeared for the ska sections, which saw kids atop parents' shoulders near the front. Taking Back Sunday's set proved that Adam Lazzara is still one of the most watchable frontmen in their genre, swinging his microphone and catching it throughout, whilst moving around the stage in a way that makes standing still seem like something other people do.
Credit: Laurent Swyngedauw @ The Mancunion
The preview for this festival described Sublime's UK debut as a sentence that still feels slightly surreal to type, and standing in that field, it still did. The Californian ska-punk legends, who arrived off the back of a comeback single 'Ensenada' which reached the top position of Billboard's Alternative Airplay Chart, and ahead of a new album coming out this summer. The band never made it to the UK during frontman Bradley Nowell's lifetime, so the fact that it is his son Jakob now fronting the band and finally closing that loop is genuinely moving.
The production matched the occasion. Two towering ten-foot Lou Dog figures, hat and sunglasses on, flanked either side of the stage. The backdrop ran nineties skate and surf footage in a deliberately grainy, VHS-style format, the visual equivalent of a Long Beach house party from 1994. For anyone new to Sublime, it was an introduction to a band that epitomised college house parties, reggae, skating and surfing, with humour and a lot of edge to it. They drew from the upcoming album Until the Sun Explodes, alongside their highly impressive back catalogue. Jakob noted that their new single had charted in 2026, which prompted a genuine reaction. What was most striking across the set was how few phones were out. People were just watching. For a festival crowd in 2026, that says more than any review can.
Good Charlotte closing a festival on its twentieth anniversary felt like the right fit. They headlined back in 2018 and, by most accounts, it was one of their best UK shows in years. This time around they arrived fresh off Motel Du Cap, their first album since 2018, with Joel and Benji Madden having spoken openly about finally making a record entirely on their own terms. The band said before the tour that they were hungrier than ever, that the story was still unfinished.
The Madden brothers have spent their career writing music for people who felt like outsiders. A crowd at Slam Dunk is, broadly speaking, exactly those people. The band opened with 'The River', and from the first song the production was working hard, featuring flames, a tiered stage, and the drummer raised on a central platform. The setlist pulled from across their catalogue, which at this stage is deep enough to fill a headline slot several times over. From near the front, the crowd ran all the way to the top of the hill.
Slam Dunk's twentieth year was always going to carry expectation, and it's safe to say that it delivered. The line-up was stacked enough that missing things was unavoidable. Dashboard Confessional, Bayside, Saosin, State Champs, SiM and Cartel all happened simultaneously, competing for the same limited hours. That is a problem worth having. Ben Ray said he had no idea the festival would reach twenty years when he started it. Looking at Temple Newsam on a Sunday afternoon in May, with Sublime on the main stage, Motion City Soundtrack drawing a crowd bigger than the Monster stage expected, and Good Charlotte's audience stretching up a hill into the distance, it is easy to see why it did. Slam Dunk has not lost the thing that made it worthwhile the first place.
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