In partnership with Open’er Festival
Words: Ali Shutler and Mark Beaumont
“I want you to go out into the world, spread the joy and have the best summer ever,” said Zara Larsson at the end of her poptastic main stage set during the first day of Open’er Festival 2026. Well, that’s easy when you’ve got some of the world’s biggest pop stars and coolest rock bands playing at Poland’s Gdynia-Kosakowo Airfield over the next few days.
This week, Open’er Festival will see performances from Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds, The Cure, Calvin Harris, JENNIE, Addison Rae, Halsey, Ethel Cain and more. It’s an eclectic mix but based on the number of people dashing from Kneecap’s politically charged rave-rap at the Tent Stage to Larsson’s empowering main stage spectacular, it’s one the crowds of Open’er are very much here for. Here’s what went down on day one of Poland’s largest and most diverse festival.
Florence + The Machine offered communal catharsis
There was more than a touch of horror to Florence + The Machine’s headline set at Open’er Festival. The show started with a troupe of vampiric dancers stalking the stage during the opening roar of ‘Scream’ and things got a bit Midsommar during ‘Rabbit Heart (Raise It Up)’ when Florence asked for “offerings” to celebrate the summer solstice, in the form of fans on shoulders.
But this run of festival shows is more about surviving the horrors of the world than succumbing to them. “Whatever you have been through, whatever you are going through, know that I am with you,” Florence told the crowd mid-way through the joyous cathartic purge of ‘Shake It Off’. “I hope we can provide you with a place to scream.”
Classic indie-folk hits ‘Spectrum’ and ‘Say My Name’ were delivered with a cool, confident swagger that allowed the crowd to belt out every word while newer songs ‘Sympathy Magic’ and ‘One Of The Greats’ gave the 90-minute set a venomous, classic rock snarl. “It must be nice to be a man and make boring music just because you can,” she sung with a vicious smirk.
From the joyous cover of Candi Stanton’s ‘You Got The Love’ to the stripped back ‘Buckle’ (dedicated to anyone currently being ghosted), Florence + The Machine’s Open’er set was all about inspiring a sense of community. “I want every person at this festival to put their phones away,” she announced before the victorious ‘Dog Days Are Over’. “I know it’s hard but filming this song will stop you from experiencing this song with the people that you love and with the people that you just met,” she explained. The result? A field of friends and strangers jumping as one before the jubilant ‘Free’ sent the loved-up crowd off into the night. (AS)
David Byrne delivered masterful art-punk
With its surrealist phallic sculptures, onsite museums and rave bank, Open’er has a long and neon-splashed history with art happenings. It’s the natural summer habitat, then, for David Byrne’s new ‘Who Is The Sky?’ show. Like ‘American Utopia’ before it, it’s part rock gig, part TED talk, part interpretive dance event and, now, part modern art installation too.
An art-rocker’s idea of an afro-funk street party, Byrne’s free-floating band of drummers, keyboardists, guitarists and dancers were back, roaming the stage in red and orange suits with their bulkier instruments strapped to them by body harness. One poor percussionist carried around a multi-pronged monstrosity that allowed him to bash numerous pans at once. But where there used to be just a shimmering chain box to dance around, the band were now surrounded by screens that turned the stage into oceans, hazy nightlife scenes or arrays of mouths, as each song demanded.
So Byrne and a wandering chamber orchestra performed a stunning ‘Heaven’ as the Earth itself rises overhead. “There she is, our heaven,” Byrne explained. “The only one we have.” For ‘And She Was’, about a girl he knew in school who found great joy in the lysergic arts, they marched and twirled through footage of white-picket US suburbia. ‘(Nothing But) Flowers’ imagined nature reclaiming a decaying consumerist world from inside a virtual cornfield and ‘Life During Wartime’ took place in the middle of a very modern American riot – state versus minority. Most striking of all, Byrne’s shadow stalked him through the opening of a sensational ‘Psycho Killer’, performed like a twisted Lynchian slo-mo nightmare.
Occasionally he paused for a mini lecture – key topics: methods of historic resistance in Poland and Italy, kindness as a modern punk statement and do animals have feelings? It added a frisson of anti-gig to an otherwise joyously funky Afro-pop extravaganza – Byrne having a dance-off with a gospel choir during a particularly fluid ‘Slippery People’, caught up in an animal head party on ‘Like Humans Do’ and joining an art rock chorus line across the front of the stage for a spectacular ‘Once In A Lifetime’. Finally, some art for lark’s sake. (MB)
The Kneecap victory lap continued
“The Polish and the Irish have a lot in common… we don’t need an excuse for a fucking party,” said Kneecap’s Móglaí Bap just before the band launched into the pulsating rave-rap of ‘Get Your Brits Out’. It might have been the first day of Open’er Festival and the live music had just gotten started, but that didn’t stop the Irish trio from delivering a boisterous, high-energy set that got the huge crowd at the Tent Stage jumping.
The band opened with snarling new song ’Smugglers And Scholars’ before the warped vibes of ‘Better Way To Live’ and ‘Sick In The Head’s moody introspection allowed Kneecap to flex their impressive musical muscles. The most talked-about group around still know how to instigate mosh pits aplenty, but their lyrical flow was tighter than it’s ever been while DJ Próvaí’s beats were beefed up for this summer of huge shows.
Last weekend, Kneecap played their biggest ever headline gig at London’s Crystal Palace Park and that victory lap continued at Open’er. Tracks from second album ‘Fenian’ gave their playfully chaotic performance a menacing edge, with the band adding industrial metal and euphoric dance to their already-eclectic pool of influences. The album’s title track inspired the biggest singalong of the set while the fiery ‘Liar’s Tale’ was dedicated to Hungary’s former Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, who banned Kneecap from the country last year. “But now Viktor’s out of a job,” cheered Bap.
As celebratory as Kneecap’s live show has become, it’s still driven by a righteous purpose that goes beyond simply having a good time. “No matter where we play, it’s important to us, as people from Ireland who suffered 800 years of colonialism, that we use our platform for what we believe to be right and true,” explained the bands Mo Chara. “And there’s no bigger crime that’s happening in our lifetime than the genocide that’s being committed in Palestine right not. We all have phones, we can all see what’s happening,” he added as chants of “free free Palestine” rang out. (AS)
The xx made a glorious return
As darkness fell over Gdynia with a spectral swirl of sound, a giant X of a lighting rig began to glow, as if made of pure dark matter and with its own strange gravity. Smoke blew through striplights and The xx crystallised onstage for an hour of haunting skeletal funk and ghost dimension rave.
“These shows this summer have been some of our first in eight years,” said Oliver Sim, clearly glad to be back even without any sign of the new material they’ve been promising since 2024. And their ecstatic reception as far afield as Poland highlighted the London trio’s standing as minimalist indie-soul icons.
Eight years on, their quiet/rave methods are more effective than ever. The spare and restrained moments of glacial guitar and quiet emotion (Romy’s exposed ‘Angels’ or a charming, starlit ‘VCR’) framed increasingly rave-y segments pulsing up from beneath their songs. ‘Crystalised’, ‘Say Something Loving’ and ‘Night Time’ built a deep-bone dance tension that was then released on ‘Fiction’, with Sim roaming the stage like Satan’s showman. As the rig lights warped and twisted trippily in the smoke, ‘Infinity’ was all deep space surf guitar akin to a very dark ‘Blue Hotel’, before building to a white dwarf climax. And a second half dominated by the threesome’s solo tracks upped the beat count significantly: Romy shimmied up the ego ramp like a black-clad disco diva to the pop blast of ‘Enjoy Your Life’; Oliver headed out into the crowd for his dank disco ‘GMT’.
Jamie’s solo contributions proved to be major mood enhancers too. Open’er witnessed the euphoric gospel surges of ad man’s favourite ‘Loud Places’ and his 2017 Hot Chip-like version of ‘Shelter’, made all the more intense by the band being boxed in by their descending X rig). Elsewhere, his remix of ‘On Hold’ lifted the crowd like the modern dance classic it is. From pout to party in one intoxicating hour. (MB)