Laneway Festival 2026
Western Springs, Auckland
Friday, February 5
REVIEWED BY DEBBIE PORTEOUS
Most surely went away from Laneway 2026 having life affirmed after a lightly fruity, fizzing day in the sun with their pals.
It would be hard, to be fair, for a Laneway fan not to be happy with that line-up - a stadium act, at least three arena acts and several rapidly rising acclaimed acts - see Geese and Pink Pantheress - all for the price of a ticket to probably not even one stadium act these days.
Cavetown already had the early attenders going on arrival, while the dub beats of Mokotron immediately made one chill - good choices to kick off the impressive line-up.
Indie folk singer Gigi Perez was the first act to get the masses into the main arena, warming up the crowd with some political talk, but it was Lucy Dacus that kicked off the big acts on the main stages.
Her set included a mix of tracks from Home Video and Historian, opening with First Time, getting the kiss cam warmed up before closing her 10-song set with Night Shift. She even tried out a new song Planting Tomatoes, which seemed to land good with the fans.
Role Model brought his bedroom pop and it was huge. There were clearly a lot there to see just him, and his repeated suggestions he was wrapping up were met with thousands of disappointed sighs turned cheers as he launched into another country pop crowd fav, eventually revealing Benee as his ‘Sally’ during his hit Sally, When The Wine Runs Out.
The crowd was also very pleased to spend a few minutes on the “chaise longue”. Wolf Alice, for me, was the stand-out of the night, notwithstanding Chappell Roan's theatrics.
Wolf Alice’s 45 minutes was heavy on Blue Weekend and Visions of a Life tracks, featuring songs such as The Clearing, Smile, Don't Delete the Kisses, Bros and Play the Greatest Hits.
It seemed people were maybe a little less familiar with how good they were, the crowd warming up as the set went on, but they might have got themselves a few new fans as they balanced out synthy hits like Bloom Baby Bloom with bangers like Smile and the punky Yuk Foo.
And what can we say about Chappell. She was huge. Everyone came to her yard. Everyone - and I mean everyone - knew every word and when you get 40,000 people singing and signing out the letters Hot To Go, fully renewing their membership of the pink Pony Club, you feel it too.
All in all, the set-up at Western Springs in Auckland was good - it was easy to navigate, there were plenty of shady spots, spots to take a time out, pee, get food and water, and it was relatively easy to get close to front of your favourite bands should you want to.
And yeah, there were some queues, but that’s 40,000 people for you.
