Y Not Festival 2026 Sunday Review: The Streets Bring a Scorching Weekend to a Spectacular Close

By Sunday morning at Y Not Festival, four days of relentless sunshine, late nights, packed stages and more live music than anyone could reasonably process were beginning to take their toll. It had been a scorching weekend in every sense, with the Peak District sun beating down from Thursday onwards and Y Not once again delivering the sort of festival where families, teenagers, seasoned gig-goers and people who simply fancied spending a weekend in a field could all find something to love.

There was still absolutely no sense of Sunday being a wind-down, though. Early sets from Black Honey, Last Orders and Bronco Lane got the final day moving before we headed back into the festival for one last marathon run around the site. What followed was arguably one of the most varied days of Y Not 2026, moving from American pop-punk and emerging British grunge to disco royalty, hip-hop nostalgia, theatrical pop and one of the most ambitious headline performances we have seen at the festival.

Fluorescents Bring Authentic Pop-Punk Energy

American pop-punk and emo outfit Fluorescents were one of our first proper stops of the day and immediately brought some much-needed energy to tired Sunday bodies. There is something wonderfully authentic about what they do, rooted firmly in that melodic, high-energy pop-punk sound without feeling like a tribute to another era.

With the bassist and two guitarists all taking turns on vocals, there is plenty happening across the stage and a real sense of movement to their live show. ‘Funeral’ proved the standout for us, exploding into one of those big, energetic pop-punk moments built for festival crowds. An excellent way to kick Sunday into gear.

Sophie Ellis-Bextor Turns Y Not Into a Giant Disco

Then came Sophie Ellis-Bextor, and quite simply, everybody danced.

Her catalogue of disco-pop classics is practically engineered for a sunny festival afternoon, and she had Y Not bouncing, clapping and singing throughout. There was warmth to the performance too, with Ellis-Bextor revealing that she had attended Y Not three years previously with her children and had developed a genuine affinity for the festival.

That connection came through in the performance. This never felt like somebody simply turning up, playing the hits and leaving. She embraced the occasion completely, before dedicating her final song, ‘Murder on the Dancefloor’, to everyone at Y Not.

Predictably, it was enormous. Thousands of voices singing, hands clapping and people dancing in the sunshine. Sometimes festivals do not need to be complicated. Give people a brilliant pop song and let them have a massive dance.

Rizzle Kicks Are Still Down With the Trumpets

Rizzle Kicks didn’t exactly walk onto the stage. They burst onto it.

Backed by a full band and brass section, Jordan Stephens and Harley Alexander-Sulé immediately reminded everyone why their live shows were so much fun in the first place. There was barely a moment where somebody wasn’t jumping around, interacting with the audience or encouraging another massive singalong.

‘Mama Do the Hump’, dedicated to the mums in attendance, predictably sent the crowd into chaos, while the brass gave everything that unmistakable Rizzle Kicks bounce.

They joked that eight years away had apparently given them enough time to sober up, although judging by the amount of energy on stage they appear to have returned even more unhinged than before.

And yes, after all these years, we’re definitely still down with the trumpets.

Good Health Good Wealth: One of Y Not 2026’s Best Discoveries

Over at The Giant Squid, Good Health Good Wealth delivered one of our favourite performances of the entire festival.

There are obvious reasons why putting them on the same day as The Streets makes sense. Urban poetry, garage and house influences, spoken word, dark observations and satirical lyrics all place them somewhere in the same musical universe. Crucially, though, Good Health Good Wealth already sound completely like themselves.

Their music is atmospheric, funny, clever and occasionally surprisingly heavy, throwing flashes of rock and roll into garage beats, electronic production and spoken-word storytelling. They also have the stage presence to make the whole strange concoction work.

New material from their forthcoming album sat comfortably alongside tracks from This Time Next Year We Will Be Millionaires, a title which prompted the admission that, unfortunately, they still aren’t.

The title track was superb, building around a raspy vocal into something that flirted with drum and bass while remaining strangely chilled. Elsewhere, a touching song dedicated to parents and inspired by his dad steadily grew towards a euphoric crescendo, the audience clapping along as the track opened up around them.

By the finale, The Giant Squid was jumping. Garage beats, samples, sharp observations and genuinely funny lyrics combined into something brilliantly difficult to categorise.

Good Health Good Wealth are heading to Derby for Invention Festival in September. After this performance, we cannot wait to see what they do there.

KEO Tear Into The Quarry

Before KEO had even appeared, chants of “KEO! KEO!” were already ringing around The Quarry.

Then they arrived and absolutely tore into it.

The emerging indie/grunge outfit sit much more heavily towards the grunge end of that description live. Dirty guitars, distortion, aggression and punk energy collided as the band attacked every song with everything they had.

The Quarry was packed, with fans hanging over the barrier and shouting every word they knew back towards the stage. KEO absolutely belted through the set and looked entirely at home in front of a festival crowd of this size.

There is a real sense of momentum around this band, and based on the reception they received at Y Not, that momentum isn’t slowing down.

Liam C Is a Proper Festival Geezer

Charlie Vibes introduced Liam C, who promptly burst onto the stage and immediately had the crowd onside.

Someone get this lad a Madri.

Thankfully, George was on hand with a cold one.

There is something incredibly infectious about Liam C’s indie-pop, which mixes massive melodic hooks with hints of urban music and Afrobeat. He has become a viral sensation, but seeing him live makes it fairly obvious why the online attention has translated into a genuine audience.

More importantly, he clearly loves that audience as much as they love him. There is no distance between Liam and his fans. He talks to people, makes time for them and carries himself with the same humility away from the stage that he does on it. Having met him previously in Derby and again backstage at Y Not, that comes across as completely genuine.

He will also be heading back to Derby for Invention Festival in September, and judging by this reception, he should bring quite a few new fans with him.

Gospeloke, The Skinner Brothers and Chaos at The Giant Squid

Sunday at a festival inevitably involves some frantic stage hopping, and somewhere along the journey we managed to catch a little Gospeloke, including ‘Everybody (Backstreet’s Back)’ and ‘The Rockafeller Skank’, before making our way across to catch the closing stages of The Skinner Brothers.

What we walked into was absolute chaos.

Ska, punk, rock and drum and bass smashed together by a gang of masked yobs who occasionally looked like they had wandered out of a Slipknot video.

We fucking loved it.

More importantly, judging by the reaction inside The Giant Squid, so did everyone else. The songs we caught were banging, the visual identity works brilliantly and there is something genuinely distinctive about the whole thing. In a weekend packed with bands fighting for attention, The Skinner Brothers managed to look and sound completely unmistakable.

Scissor Sisters Bring Colour, Camp and Giant Scissors to Y Not

If subtlety was what you wanted from Sunday evening, Scissor Sisters were probably not your band.

Giant scissors dominated the stage. An army-style jeep carried the band’s logo. Costumes were extravagant, colourful and constantly changing. Video screens and samples added to the spectacle.

It was camp, theatrical, ridiculous and fucking brilliant fun.

‘Let’s Have a Kiki’ was every bit as cheeky and playful as it should be, while ‘Only the Horses’ provided one of the set’s genuinely touching moments. Dedicated to the audience, everyone was encouraged to hug the people they loved and actually tell them they loved them.

For a few minutes, there was a palpable feeling of affection running through the crowd before everybody went straight back to bouncing around.

That mixture of spectacle, emotion and pure pop escapism made Scissor Sisters an inspired booking for the final evening.

And then it was time for The Streets.

The Streets Turn Y Not Festival Into Theatre

We have seen a lot of festival headline sets. What Mike Skinner brought to Y Not was something different.

The Streets opened by performing A Grand Don’t Come for Free, complete with a full bus stop set recreating the visual world of the album.

For us, this was particularly special. A Grand Don’t Come for Free remains one of our favourite albums of all time, a brilliantly written concept record from one of Britain’s great inner-city poets. Seeing Skinner bring its story to life rather than simply playing the biggest tracks felt genuinely ambitious.

For long stretches, he barely acknowledged that thousands of people were watching.

Instead, he sat around the bus stop, avoided eye contact with the crowd, interacted with the female vocalist and completely immersed himself in the characters and story. Graffiti appeared across the bus stop during the opening songs. Conversations became part of the performance. The post-holiday phone call became a scene rather than simply another track.

This wasn’t simply a gig. At times, it felt closer to watching theatre.

‘Fit But You Know It’ naturally sent Y Not into meltdown, yet even as the audience erupted, the acting and narrative continued. Some of the songs on A Grand Don’t Come for Free would feel strange performed individually because they exist to move the story forward. Presented together like this, they suddenly made complete sense on a festival stage.

Even the rewind during the closing section was accompanied by carefully coordinated lighting effects before the cast eventually took a final bow.

Beautifully done.

And then everything changed.

Mike Skinner Throws One Last Y Not Party

The encore brought back the more familiar Streets experience. The backdrop changed, Mike returned to the stage and suddenly he was talking directly to Y Not, joking, rambling and turning the closing stretch into one enormous party.

Someone held up “WHO GOT THE BAG?” written on the back of a cider box. An inflatable alien emerged from the pit. A football arrived and Skinner booted it back towards the crowd.

Naturally, this led to a lengthy discussion about aliens and whether meeting extraterrestrial life would actually be a good idea considering we have absolutely no idea what they might do to us.

Then, almost without effort, he slipped straight back into the songs.

That is the brilliance of watching Mike Skinner live. He can wander away from his own lyrics, tell a completely unrelated story, interact with somebody in the audience and somehow arrive perfectly back on cue.

‘Don’t Mug Yourself’ was our song of the weekend.

Thousands danced and shouted every word back towards the stage before the song mutated into a much harder drum and bass ending, squeezing the last remaining energy out of Y Not’s Sunday crowd.

‘The Church of the Holy Is a Nice Place to Be’ brought things down beautifully before Skinner inevitably started chatting again, returning to the alien situation and eventually finding his way back into the lyrics as though none of it had happened.

His words remain clever, observational and relevant more than two decades after The Streets first emerged. Perhaps most impressive was looking around and seeing how many younger fans were screaming those words alongside people who had grown up with the records.

Mike Skinner still speaks to both.

The Best View in the House

For the final moments of Y Not Festival 2026, we somehow ended up with the best view in the entire festival.

A special shout out and massive thank you goes to Mike Rule and the family from Traditional Steam Fair Cambridge, who allowed us to watch the final song of the weekend from the top of the Helter Skelter.

From up there, Y Not suddenly looked enormous.

Below us was a vast crowd watching The Streets take their final bow. Beyond the stages, tents, rides and lights sat the picturesque Peak District landscape that makes this festival’s location so special.

After four days of scorching sunshine, brilliant music, ridiculous moments, new discoveries, old favourites and thousands of people simply having a good time together, it was the perfect place to take everything in one last time.

Y Not is a special festival. It manages to be big without losing its personality, diverse without feeling directionless and welcoming to different generations without becoming sanitised. From Fluorescents and KEO to Sophie Ellis-Bextor, Rizzle Kicks, Good Health Good Wealth, Liam C, Scissor Sisters and finally The Streets, Sunday encapsulated exactly why the weekend works.

Watching from high above the festival as Mike Skinner took that final bow, there wasn’t much more left to say.

Farewell, Y Not.

Until next year.

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