Blink-182 will headline next year's Download Festival at Donington Park, making their debut at the Leicestershire rock event, the BBC reported. The California pop-punk band will share top billing from June 9 to 13 with Evanescence and Bring Me The Horizon. Organizers said the three are among more than 100 rock and metal acts set to play. Other names already confirmed include The Prodigy, 5 Seconds of Summer, a special performance by Mötley Crüe, Turnstile, Faith No More, Body Count featuring Ice-T, and Malevolence. The festival said more acts will be announced. Some pre-sales are already open, and general tickets go on sale at 10:00 GMT on Sunday.
Evanescence will become only the second female-fronted headliner in the festival's history. Singer Amy Lee founded the American rock band in the mid-1990s, and their best-known single, "Bring Me to Life," was a U.K. number one in 2003. It is the second year in a row a female-led band has topped the bill, after Linkin Park in 2025, now fronted by Emily Armstrong following the death of Chester Bennington in 2017. Bring Me The Horizon, formed in Sheffield, are more familiar to Download regulars and will headline for the second time in five years. The four-piece said earlier this year they are celebrating 20 years of their 2006 debut, "Count Your Blessings," by re-recording it. That record was in the deathcore genre; the band has since moved toward metalcore, pop, and electronic rock. Frontman Oli Sykes, 39, told the BBC Radio 1 Rock Show that going back to their roots was "a lot of fun" as they "got to remake the album how we wanted it to sound back then."
Blink-182 emerged from the California skate-punk scene in the 1990s, have had two U.K. top 10 singles, and scored their first number one album in 2016, 21 years after their first record. Download bills itself as spanning "the full spectrum of rock, metal, punk, emo, hardcore, alternative and classic rock," and called this year's lineup "bigger, better and bolder than ever." Not every fan was convinced. On the festival's Instagram post, one commenter said "the fact they've been posted as some mega headliner at a metal festival blows my mind," and added, "Literally not one headliner that's proper metal." Madison Travers, 27, who is hoping to go for a ninth year in a row, told Newsbeat she is "really happy with the line-up" but that "the community there and just the energy all weekend is what we look forward to."
In recent years the festival has also booked pop acts and surprise guests, including the Vengaboys in 2024 and Dogstar, the band formed by actor Keanu Reeves, in 2026. The verified announcement is the dates, the three headliners, the first supporting names, and the Sunday general-sale time. Whether the "proper metal" argument fades will be clearer once the rest of the bill, and the ticket sale, are out.