In partnership with Sziget Festival
Words: Jordan Bassett, Rhian Daly
It’s time to say viszlát to Sziget Festival for 2026, with the festival closing out with a magical last day yesterday (August 15). What a week it’s been – a spectacular bill of acts from across the musical spectrum, intriguing art and performances dotted between the stages, and something surprising at every turn. Case in point: while taking one last wander around the site, NME stumbled upon a pack of wolves on stilts parading down one path, backed by a drummer on a lit-up vehicle blasting a funk backing track. Wild!
Before we departed the Island of Freedom, there were still plenty of highlights to be had, from a party set from Jorja Smith to Skrillex shaking the site with a juddering headline set. Read on for our final missive from Budapest for this summer.
Skrillex closed things out in style
There are two schools of thought when it comes to booking a headliner for the last night of a festival. On one hand, organisers can choose someone who wraps things up softly and sweetly. On the other, they can get an act in to make sure the last night is one massive party. With Sziget closing out on Saturday, it makes sense that the festival bookers took the latter option and secured Skrillex to top the bill for the grande finale.
It was a headline set packed with pyro, smoke and lights akin to lasers lighting up the night sky, as the Los Angeles DJ and producer brought his wobbling beats and rattling bass to the main stage field. A huge crowd came to send off Sziget 2026 with his set, and they were rewarded with a raft of bangers, from remixes of Jack Ü’s ‘Where Are Ü Now’ and Don Toliver’s ‘E85’ to original Skrillex tracks like ‘Ratata’ and ‘Diwali’, a collaboration with rapper Beam and rising Indian singer Naisha.
Curiously, Skrillex chose to keep the screens on either side of the stage dark for the majority of the show, only flashing up footage of him bouncing around behind the decks at irregular moments. But perhaps one yelled comment to the crowd reveals his thinking behind that choice – before a mash-up of Damian Marley’s ‘Welcome To Jamrock’ and Skrillex’s collab with Bob’s youngest son, ‘Make It Bun Dem’, he told us to “put your fucking phones down” and instead enjoy “real motherfucking life”. To their credit, the audience largely obeyed, throwing their hands up to the sky rather than their devices, lifting the energy of the set even higher.
But still our headliner wasn’t entirely satisfied. After the track was done, he meekly ordered us to “scream”, before repeating a few seconds later, in a much more powerful tone: “SCREAAAAM.” His wish was our command. (RD)
Zimmer90 gave Sziget a feel-good send-off
“It’s so crazy for us,” beamed Zimmer90 singer Josch Becker, looking out at the impressive crowd that the German dream-pop band had drawn to the Revolut Stage. It was the group’s first-ever show in Hungary, but they were received with such warmth and familiarity that you’d think they were festival stalwarts. “There are so many people here!” he marvelled. “Enjoy the last day of your festival!”
The trio, completed by guitarist/bassist Finn Gronemeyer and drummer Michael Schoett, warmed up the crowd for Skrillex’s thrillingly chaotic headline set by front-loading the show with the hazy pop side of their oeuvre, before moving into an admittedly quite genteel rave-up in the second half. This included the winsome ‘Yours & Mine’, with Becker – clad in a blue retro Adidas trackie and shades – grooving behind the keyboard to the song’s ethereal rhythm.
From the hazy funk guitar of ‘Makes Me Wanna Dance’ to the lithe bass of ‘Movin’’ (the first track they ever released, five years ago), the lads left nothing to chance in their mission to give Sziget a feel-good send-off. Becker then introduced ‘Learn to Let You Go’, the track Zimmer90 wrote with their “good friends from New Zealand”, Balu Brigada. After the stage was bathed in an orange glow for an appropriately blissed-out ‘Summer Nights’, they ushered in the after-hours section of the show with the noirish beats of ‘What Love Is’.
It was well-timed, given that dusk was beginning to settle on the Island of Freedom, and Zimmer90 rose to the occasion with a cover of Daft Punk’s nocturnal anthem ‘One More Time’. “We’re gonna do a new song,” Becker then announced. “It’s not out yet!” As he led the crowd in a call-and-response refrain “I can’t Stop / I won’t stop,” cascading synths washed over the Revolut Stage. Over to you, Skrillex. (JB)
The best of the rest
Jorja Smith had a lot to celebrate during her Sziget 2026 set. Next week (August 21), she’ll release her third album ‘What Are The Odds’ and the Walsall singer has just returned to Europe after two weeks supporting Harry Styles in Mexico City. “I’m jetlagged, it’s like I’m in a different time zone,” she confessed at one point.
But her party set, as her slot was dubbed, didn’t get lost in translation, with the audience gathered in front of the main stage grooving to old cuts like ‘Where Did I Go?’ and ‘Try Me’, as well as fresher material. Latest single ‘I Lied, You Lied’ proved the highlight of the latter pocket of songs, piano and sax lines gently weaving through a hypnotic beat built to take you to the dancefloor and keep you there. (RD)
The words “DO YOU WANNA GET IN TROUBLE?” flashed up on video screens during Soulwax’s outrageously funky midnight set on the Revolut Stage. It’s the title of the burbling 2017 track that the Belgian dance collective unleashed early in the show, but also the question that Sziget implicitly asked punters on the final night of the festival. After Skrillex razed the main stage and finished the job with a sensational fireworks display, the line-up went heavy on electronic chaos into the wee hours.
Exemplifying this, brothers David and Stephen Dewaele huddled around a huge circular unit as they pumped out their crunching electro and three drummers – three! – created a cacophony behind them. At one point, a voice was piped through the PA to explain that the unit was a set of ‘controllers’ that were themselves connected to synthesisers. This apparently enabled them to layer their sonic madness, creating a truly soul-shaking sound. (JB)
