Lowlands started on Friday the 21st of August, although the camping had opened the day before. The massive festival site promised to host some incredible artists and deliver an unbelievably good time over the weekend.
First up was Skye Newman, a singer from South London, “If you couldn’t tell.” She said this, giggling, referring to her heavy accent. She also apologized in advance, as she’d previously had the feedback that she speaks too fast for non-native English speakers to be able to understand her. “Can you understand me?” she asked the crowd, who cheered back excitedly. Newman also used her time on stage to speak about how she feels there should be a lot more love spread in the world, showcasing her own love and gratefulness towards her team, who made it possible for her to be up on the stage today: “It takes an army to do this job.” Asking the crowd to teach her the words ‘I love you’ in Dutch, she stated that she wouldn’t “even […] try that” after hearing everyone shout out “Ik hou van jou”. Newman also professed her love for all the amazing women she’s blessed with in her life. She talked about the importance and beauty of womanhood, dedicating ‘Woman I Am’ to all the incredible women in her life.
Not much later, the Alpha (Lowlands’ main stage) was opened by none other than Amyl and the Sniffers. This wasn’t their first rodeo, as they’ve played Lowlands twice before. An important message appeared on the screens right before the band took to the stage. It asked the crowd to take care of each other and stated that they have a zero-tolerance policy towards sexual assault and discrimination. Lead singer Amy Taylor stood out immediately as she stepped up on stage thanks to her extravagant blow-out. Despite it being only 2 pm, which feels like 8 in the morning at festivals, the first mosh pits began to form in front of the Alpha. The energy both on stage as well as in the crowd was great. The fans had a good time, and the musicians seemed to feel the same.
The long-awaited visit to Europe from Slovakian pop star Adéla was finally happening. Before this summer, she had only toured the US and played one show in London. This summer, she’d been playing multiple festivals in Europe, and her fans were eagerly awaiting her arrival in Biddinghuizen. Adéla first entered the public eye on the show Dreamstar Academy, the talent training programme which led to the formation of Katseye. Adéla grew up training for ballet from a young age and has incorporated multiple elements of ballet in her pop persona. Just before Lowlands, Adéla scored her first big hit with ‘Ain’t in LA’. For her live performances, like the one at Lowlands, she incorporated a lot of heavy choreography, including a whole bit on pointe. The performance showed just how incredibly talented she is. To be able to pull off this choreography, while singing absolute bangers, takes not only a trained artist, but a pro athlete as well.
Another pop girl, Rose Gray, turned the X-Ray into a club. The X-Ray was packed with dancing fans. Gray did not lack any confidence, so it seemed. The stage was decorated like a girly bedroom with a life-size mirror and giant blowers pointed right at her. She moved like she owned the place. The fans consumed it like a drug.
Rapper JPEGMAFIA, performing on the Heineken stage just before the Dutchies would have their usual dinner, may look tough, but he shattered this image by choosing to cover ‘Call Me Maybe’, revealing his softer side in the middle of his hip-hop set. The energy was high from the get-go and the crowd was clearly enjoying themselves, moshing and crowdsurfing as much as possible. However, about 20 minutes before his set was supposed to end, JPEGMAFIA left the stage due to some technical difficulties. The band seemed to be confused about what was going on, and so did the crowd, feeling disappointed that it had to end this way.
Next up was an act that national papers deemed ‘controversial’. What is controversial about them is that they are anti-colonisation and very vocal about it. They want the Brits out of Ireland and a free Palestine. Is that really all that controversial? This was written, of course, about Irish trio Kneecap, who sure knew how to get the crowd going. With their strong political statements in the form of really good music, they managed to get multiple mosh pits to emerge in the crowd.
Dev Heynes, also known as Blood Orange, then took the stage in the Heineken. The performance was not like the usual solo artist’s performance. If you did not know any better, you would think you came for the band. All musicians seemed to play an equally important role in the group, except for the fact that Heynes was the lead singer. Even the background vocalists were giving the performance their all, dancing and having genuine smiles on their faces for the whole of the performance. Heynes couldn’t have made this performance as memorable without all the others on stage playing their important parts.
Parcels, the final act of our day, was the perfect band to just have fun listening to. It was almost impossible not to like them. Their songs flowed so seamlessly into one another that you could barely hear one song end and another begin. One of the band members gave a shoutout to his sister, who was in the audience on her birthday. The audience was not necessarily enjoying the music in a sing-a-long type of way, but in a dance-along type of way. The whole space in front of the Alpha was filled with dancing people.
All photos of Friday can be found here.
At the start of the second festival day, a large, bridge-like construction occupied the Heineken stage, with a space below it reserved for the drums and guitar. Ravyn Lennae appeared in a shimmering silver dress, moving like an animal across the stage. For this performance, she really got into character, her facial expressions also seemingly non-human. One of her songs, ‘Love Me Not’, recently went viral on TikTok. So, of course, Lennae would not play it until the end of her set. Before ending on that high, she used her to time to prove she’s a magnificent performer and much more than a viral moment.
At four in the afternoon, Dutch alternative singer S10 followed four girls dressed as princesses onto the Alpha stage. The princesses positioned themselves front and center, set to the decor of a massive pink inflatable castle and flowers in the brightest of colours. It was as if the crowd got a peak inside the imagination of a much younger version of Stien den Hollander. This decor perfectly visualised her most recent album, Mijn Haren Ruiken Naar Vuur, produced by ex-Bring Me The Horizon member Jordan Fish. A fifth princess walked on together with S10 herself, forming a choir with the other four girls, giving extra depth to the already beautiful vocals of S10. The singer opened her set with ‘Buut Vrij’. During the set, S10 herself mentioned how happy and carefree the decor seemed to be in contrast to how she herself was feeling at the moment. While the stage captured her latest release perfectly, the singer has had a very rough year as she suddenly lost her twin brother. Before performing her most well-known song ‘De Diepte’, she read out a note about how she knew she was not alone in her grief, as there were many people who should have been on this field today, but were not. She followed this with another quiet song, ‘Safe and Sound’, a collaboration with Belgian artist Oscar and the Wolf. The Lowlands crowd was extremely lucky, because the singer even made it to the Alpha to sing together with S10. Later on, she also brought out Froukje for the performances of ‘Hart In Brand’ and ‘Ik Haat Hem Voor Jou’. The crowd especially loved those songs as the artists have a great overlap in fandom.
The duo IJSLAND, consisting of Dutch artists Sef and Abel, joined by Belgian DJ Faisal, needed a bigger stage, which is both a compliment as well as a critique. IJSLAND has been getting some great publicity lately, specifically after the huge success of their performance at Down the Rabbit Hole, of which pictures can be found here. The thing that makes IJSLAND’s performance so outstandingly good is the way Fais, Sef, and Abel get their crowd to explode. The best way to experience this is to be in the middle of the crowd. On Saturday at Lowlands, IJSLAND performed in the Bravo, a cross-shaped tent. When you are in said tent, you can get absorbed in the performance, as if everything outside the tent does not exist. However, outside the tent, you cannot really connect with the performance. Their music is not meant to just be listened to; it is meant to be screamed back at them, preferably with a whole crowd. The shape of the tent makes for quite some big blind spots for anyone standing outside the tent. So when the tent was overflowing with people coming for IJSLAND, whoever did not fit in, got left out and did not get to experience the performance. If they would have been on the main stage, this would not have been an issue. Maybe next time?
While the crowd at the big stage apparently got peppersprayed during Major Lazer, nobody at the India had a clue, because that was where the actual party was happening. Chloe Qisha, who makes cool, classic, girly pop, put on an effortlessly sexy yet funny performance, the perfect mix to potentially make it big. In between singing her songs, Qisha entertained the crowd by telling them stories and interacting with them. For example, she explained that she wrote ‘Evelyn’ about a girl she was jealous of in high school for being much smarter and cooler than her. She also told the crowd that she wrote ‘He Likes Boys’, the song that set her on the path towards her next album, about her love for a boy being unrequited because he’s into boys. However fun Qisha’s performance was, it did miss some personality. The songs are fun, the outfit was cute, and the stories told were interesting, but perhaps felt too rehearsed: it did not feel like the audience got to know the singer. Despite this missing ingredient, the crowd got bigger and bigger as her catchy, danceable songs drew in the people walking by, and sometimes, that’s enough.
In the Bravo, Geese took to the stage, a band that’s been truly hyped up over the past two years. Yet, their music is not for everyone. Their performance was really experimental, and it took some time for the crowd to get up to speed. However, by the end of their set, they seemed to have found their vision and the crowd seemed to finally understand what they were trying to say.
While not a headliner, there was only one artist who could enter the stage with this amount of flair and spectacle: Sombr. Before his set started, a livestream appeared on the screens of Sombr running around the field near a very fancy old car. After running some laps, he came towards the camera and started to signal for the crowd to get louder. He made a quick stop at the porta-loo before coming out to walk in the direction of the stage. He again signalled for the crowd to cheer louder and they happily did. Right before he went on stage, just behind the curtains, he did some push-ups to show off. When he finally appeared on stage, he had his Miranda Priestly moment and threw his white fur coat on his bass player. The crowd eagerly sang along to his many hit songs, including ‘12 to 12’ and his newest single ‘My Body Isn’t Ready’.
Tyler, The Creator’s ended this day with an explosive set. It had pyro, he showed his quirky dances, and he played his hits. He asked, “Where the fuck am I? Holland, right?”. He had a very packed schedule this festival season, so no wonder he was confused. Midway through his set, he asked the crowd if they were still with him. Of course they were; how could you not, witnessing this captivating spectacle.
All photos of Saturday can be found here.
On the early Sunday afternoon, the Lima tent was not filled yet when anaiis took to the stage. However, it didn’t take long for her to lure in the Lowlanders passing by. The soft and relaxed sound of her music was perfect to start this final day with. Before singing her song ‘Honeydew’, the singer explained how she wrote it about the complexity of wanting to hold on to a feeling forever, especially when in love. “You cannot hold love in a grip,” she said. Later on, she also acknowledged how it is such a privilege to be able to make music and wanted to take a moment to read aloud from something that inspired her creative journey as well as her life in general. She read a passage from the essay ‘Love as the Practice of Freedom’ by Belle Hooks. It was a beautiful piece to bring with her as the audience listened attentively.
The whirlwind of press Sophie Straat received this summer made her one of the more notorious artists on the line-up. Straat makes Dutch protest music and went viral with a clip from her set at Best Kept Secret this year. During the set, there was a moment when she asked women and other minorities to come to the front and to make space for them; she asked white men to go to the back. This statement brought a lot of online discourse with it, especially in Dutch right-wing media. Straat got dozens of death threats and asked the left-wing media to speak up after she felt left alone to fend for herself. Now, she got the chance to take the stage again. Fortunately, not all white men hated her after BKS. There were a lot of them wearing her merch and attending her show. Her intro was a livestream from behind the scenes. Images of her getting ready with her crew were displayed on the screens in the tent. Besides the political message, Straat knows how to make bangers and how to perform them as well. She showed Lowlands she most definitely can sing. The crowd took it all in and went along with the party. There were even mosh pits in between songs; that’s how excited her fans were. Halfway through her set, Straat kissed her guitarist in excitement. She spoke again to acknowledge the crazy summer she’s experienced thus far. She was clearly happy to be here, on one of the biggest stages festival summer has to offer in the Netherlands.
Having made it back to the Lima stage, it was time for Erin LeCount to turn the tent into a church. The beautiful lace dress, paired with her long, loose platinum blonde hair, made her look like an angel when she appeared on stage. It started raining right when her set started, so most of the crowd passing by went straight inside. It resulted in a crowd that was largely not yet familiar with the artist. The perfect chance to win over some new faces. As she started ‘DON’T YOU SEE ME TRYING’, her voice sounded simply angelic. She worked the stage on her own, producing sick beats, singing, and frolicking around the stage. Doing it all, by herself. It was immediately clear how incredibly talented she is. Her latest single is about a feeling which is not necessarily relatable to all. It only shows how passionate an artist Lecount really is. She described the feeling as a sort of longing and jealousy when looking at, or experiencing, art, and wishing you were the one to make that particular piece of art. She experienced this feeling especially when watching certain movies. That feeling turned into the song ‘THE CINEMA’.Erin Lecount showed at Lowlands 2026 that she has the potential to become big, really big.
Celeste, meanwhile, did not seem prepared all too well. She was hopping around the stage, making movements one cannot really call dancing. She wanted interaction with the fans, as she performed most of the songs at the small frontstage, very close to the barrier. However, when the fans sang back to her during ‘I’m a chosen’, she signaled to silence them. It left the fans very confused and perhaps didn’t leave the best impression she could have made today. 2hollis, unfortunately, also didn’t manage to leave a lasting impression. This wasn’t at all his fault, though, as he’s an interesting sight and hyperpop music got those in attendance ecstatic. With flashing strobe lights and flashy movements, he showed the crowd how to entertain, but the crowd just simply wasn’t that big. The Bravo tent wasn’t even half full. Unfortunate, because the singer deserved way more.
Turnstile, on the other hand, seemed to have all their fans right here at Lowlands. The gathering at the Alpha was enormous. The band told everybody to scream, and the crowd did not need more encouragement. Beer was thrown into the air, mosh pits appeared out of nowhere, and people were crowdsurfing all over the place. Not much later, Ninajirachi got the X-ray packed. Literally, if you were in there, you could not move an inch. However, people still danced. Nina herself danced too. There was not a moment when she stood still. The whole stage was videogame-themed with bright lights and visuals. The whole performance felt like a rabbit hole down into her own imaginary world.
On Sunday night, the very last night of the festival, attendees were expecting spectacle. Lorde delivered. Some of her classics were performed right at the start of her set, like ‘Royals’ and ‘What Was That’. Lorde said she enjoyed being in the Netherlands, and that she’s felt this way ever since she first made it here at just sixteen years old. She is now 29, and a lot has happened in those 13 years of life. She stated that she feels like we get buried under a new pile of shit every day, but that it’s been rewarding, while getting older, to have reached into her past. To reach for her ancestors as well as the younger versions of herself that have existed and experienced all that. “The human body is the ultimate instrument for living,” she said, encouraging the crowd to push your body to do weird things. To have weird sex, do weird drugs, but do it all safely. While preaching these words, she put on an effortless performance with her own body, performing a setlist full of hit songs, like ‘Team’, ‘Man Of The Year’ and ‘Girls, So Confusing’. She ended with ‘Ribs’. The perfect ending to a long festival weekend.
All photos of Sunday can be found here.
