It’s that time of year again where the UK welcomes some of the worlds biggest acts in Alternative, Rock, Pop, Dance and more to the stage. Reading and Leeds Festival.
Reading and Leeds festival is a pair of music festivals that take place annually in UK cities Reading and Leeds. The festival dates back as far as 1955 and is still famous today for being the longest running popular music festival to still exist. Every year on the August bank holiday weekend, Richfield Avenue in central Reading and Bramham Park in Leeds welcome over 100,000 avid music lovers for a weekend jam packed with music’s most current and popular artists.
This year’s festival runs from August 25th to August 27th, and the line up features headlining performances from Sam Fender, Foals, The Killers, The 1975, Billie Eilish and Imagine Dragons. Lewis Capaldi was set to be amongst this crowd, however, in June 2023 the Scottish sensation cancelled all his upcoming performances. Luckily, The 1975 were ready to replace him and perform as Reading and Leeds headliners for the third time in the band’s career.
If you weren’t able to make it to this year’s festival, do not feel like you’ve missed out completely! There is plenty of live coverage for you to get your live music fix this weekend.
BBC One will be broadcasting shows that feature highlights and coverage of two of this year’s headline performances, The Killers and Billie Eilish.
The Killers’ performance will be aired on BBC One on Sunday 27th August starting at 11:40pm. The Grammy nominated band is sure to get the crowd excited with their world famous Indie classics such as “Mr Brightside” and “Somebody Told Me”, as well as performing songs from their latest album Pressure Machine which was released in 2021.
Reading rocked again tonight! pic.twitter.com/SLXAvjN42l
— The Killers (@thekillers) August 26, 2023
Similarly, the BBC is set to air the much anticipated performance of Billie Eilish’s first ever Reading and Leeds headline on Monday 28th August at 11:15pm. The 21 year old has taken the world by storm with hits such as “Bad Guy”, “When the Party’s Over” and “What was I Made For?”, the latter being featured on the Soundtrack for Greta Gerwig’s Barbie (2023) movie.
In addition to these two special shows, BBC iPlayer will have 24/7 coverage of Reading and Leeds festival, which can be found here. You will be able to livestream the entire festival for free, and from the comfort of your own home. Also, from Monday 28th August, there will be the opportunity to watch highlights from the weekend and even past performances from previous years, meaning you can catch up on all things Reading and Leeds even after the festival goer’s tents have been taken down.
You can also catch live broadcasts from Reading’s Main Stage East and Main Stage West on BBC Radio 1 throughout the weekend.
For the full line up, click here.