Outbreak Festival 2025 – London was ready for a hardcore fest! | Live Reviews

London received for the first time a staple of UK hardcore scene that started in Manchester, the Outbreak Festival. While still happening at the weekend in Manchester, the London edition was held at the Victoria Park, and had a packed lineup for all tastes and generations, from Danny Brown, Julie, Alex G, to Glassjaw, Speed, and the very hyped (for a reason) Knocked Loose and Turnstile. The London edition came to prove it wasn’t going to take the challenge mildly and delivered!

Interestingly enough, it wasn’t just a hardcore fest, it had a mix of the subcultures, from rap, shoegaze, hardcore and indie fans, the crowd was filling out during the day, with a natural slow start in the earlier acts, to a fully packed Turnstile closing the festival night for around 15000 people.

The festival had 3 stages, the Main Stage and 2 tents, one of which was hosting the more “traditional” hardcore acts, such as Speed, Glassjaw and Knocked Loose. Although Turnstile was still on the main stage, the tents definetly felt overpacked, and even on a very hot day, they were not stopping the crowd from crazy mosh pits, crowd surfing and litres of sweat to the heavy music.

The Main Stage was not short of great acts, with Julie bringing their signature shoegaze, and getting the crowd quite engaged and ready for more, Danny Brown brought a great crossover hip hop, and energy to the stage and surprised us with how much the crowd was engaged, proving that nowadays having genre gatekeepers is getting less and less frequent. He was also followed by Alex G, delivering a melodic and melancholic set that gave the audience a breather before things turned up several notches for Turnstile.

Even with all the chaos and heavy music, one thing we could notice above all: there was a strong feeling of community, people were very friendly to each other, seemed to respect individual space and made sure everyone was feeling well.

Headline: Turnstile

Of course we couldn’t mention how great the night ended with Turnstile, that recently released the album “Never Enough” and besides a minor delay for the gig to start, they all came of with a lot of energy and the whole crowd reacted, as the weather was cooling down to what would become a rainy end.

To a perfect sound, Brendan Yates was not only delivering the lines, but an immense energy to the stage and crowd, by raising the microphone pedestal to the crowd, doing a wide range of jumps on the stage.

They played a wide range of songs, from older to new ones, with highlights to “Alien Love Call” and “Never Enough” that counted with the participation of Blood Orange, with “Never Enough” being extended by a flute solo from Shabaka Hutchings.

As the band progressed with songs like “Fly Again”, “I Care” the rain started at the park, giving an even stronger atmosphere to the show, and it wasn’t enough to make people stop dancing. It felt as a much needed refresh on what was a very hot and dry day.

Birds closed the night, to a wide range of moshpits and remembering everyone why Turnstile is such a power in and out of the Hardcore Scene, after having played for the first time in the UK also at Outbreak, in 2013.

All in all the festival that started at 2PM and finished around 23 ran quite smooth for a first version, also thanks to the partnership of the Lido organization, having food and drinks for all tastes, toilets everywhere and a great staff and security teams that supported every punter along the day.

For us, it felt that some of the acts on the tent could’ve taken the main stage, as they were definetly oversubscribed and more chaotic than the tents could hold, but being a hardcore festival, we don’t expect perfection, and it offered us with a dynamic and fun range of acts, guests and what we hope is a beginning of a new generation for Outbreak.