Mumford & Sons at BST Hyde Park 2026: The Folk Revivalists Return to the Great Oak Stage

Hyde Park has considerable history with Mumford & Sons. They appeared here supporting Kings of Leon in 2011, returned as headliners five years later and, a decade on, arrived with two recent albums – 2025’s Rushmere and this year’s Prizefighter – to draw from.

Before them came a support act carrying considerably more weight than that description normally implies. The War on Drugs are a Grammy-winning rock band in their own right – A Deeper Understanding won Best Rock Album in 2018 – and for an hour Hyde Park belonged almost entirely to Adam Granduciel and his band.

Their emotionally heavy wall of sound seemed made for the scale of the place. Guitars shimmered and stretched across the park while synths, saxophone and an unhurried rhythm section allowed songs such as Red Eyes, Pain, Harmonia’s Dream and the monumental Under the Pressure to gradually gather force. Rather than chasing festival-sized moments, The War on Drugs simply let the arrangements expand until they became them. One contemporary review went as far as calling theirs the set of the day.

There is something almost cinematic about this band at full flight. Granduciel rarely needs to dominate the stage; the drama sits inside the music, guitar lines appearing and disappearing within a dense, emotive wash of sound. As the afternoon heat gave way to the evening light, it soared over the Hyde Park faithful for the duration of an epic set. A heavyweight support act in every sense, and one capable of headlining considerably more than most bands asked to fill this particular slot.

Mumford & Sons nevertheless had little difficulty following them. Arriving onstage as an expanded nine-piece, Marcus Mumford announced that they hadn’t come to mess around before Begin Again kicked proceedings into life. I Will Wait, White Blank Page, Lover of the Light and Hopeless Wanderer quickly demonstrated why these songs became festival staples in the first place: big choruses, urgent acoustic rhythms and an audience perfectly willing to supply additional vocals.

The newer material held its ground too. Truth brought a noticeably heavier, more muscular edge, while The Wolf remains evidence that the electric detour of Wilder Mind produced songs particularly well suited to large stages. Little Lion Man, inevitably, required considerably less encouragement, Hyde Park taking over much of the vocal.

There were guests, although importantly the evening never depended on them. Stella Lefty appeared for Badlands, while Hozier joined the band for Rubber Band Man and Awake My Soul, his voice providing an obvious fit with Mumford’s.

The biggest surprise was saved for the encore. Shania Twain, fresh from appearing at Wembley Stadium earlier that evening, walked on for Here before the unlikely combination launched into Man! I Feel Like a Woman!. It was gloriously unexpected and received exactly the reaction you would imagine from a packed Hyde Park.

The Cave, complete with fireworks, brought things to a suitably enormous conclusion.

Mumford & Sons may no longer be the waistcoat-and-banjo phenomenon that emerged from West London almost two decades ago, but Hyde Park showed why they remain formidable festival headliners. The sound has broadened, the catalogue has deepened and the communal pull of those early songs hasn’t gone anywhere.

BST Hyde Park 2026 continues with Pitbull on 10 July and Lewis Capaldi on 11 and 12 July.

Tickets and further information are available at www.bst-hydepark.com.