Victorious Festival
Southsea Common, Portsmouth
28th-30th August 2026
Southsea Common was the colour of a beach by the time we assembled for Victorious. After a sauna of a summer, the hilarious meteorology gods saw that the grass needed a little hydration and lined up some intense rain on the forecast. It turned out dusty, then gusty, with (mercifully) only a few brief showers that arrived and sent the glitter brigade running for cover, but gave the Goretex crew a warm, dry smug grin. As for the music, nothing could stop that from being the headline act this year.
Friday 28th
Friday’s highest points came mostly away from the big stages. The Under The Trees Stage, which will receive more resplendent praise in due course, provided us with The Love Buzz, Good Health Good Wealth and GANS.
Cork’s The Love Buzz have a splendid record in competitions that showcase musical talent. Having been finalists in the Glastonbury Emerging Talent Competiton in 2023, they had won their Victorious slot through being the champions in the 2026 Truck Festival Band App competition. By the time they’d played Pushing On and Freeloaded, splendidly assisted by their special guest, young cousin Freddie, we could see how they’d beaten off 1599 competitors this time around. The more they played, early in the day, but close to a major entrance, the more they drew a crowd of new admirers. If you like the sound and spirit of a Frank & Walters/Sultans of Ping hybrid (with a sprinkle of scuzz), you’d do well to see them yourself.
Good Health Good Wealth played after sundown and evoked very much the spirit of going out and having fun. As they played This Time Next Year We’ll Be Millionaires, we probably all had the same eyebrow raise about just how little financial reward seems to come the way of hard-working creatives, but if the song title had ended with ‘on a bigger stage’ rather than ‘millionaires’, they would have received nods of accord from those already nodding to their tunes.
GANS delivered the set of the weekend. Under The Trees briefly became the Haribo Overdrive Stage as they tore through an ultimately indescribable and thoroughly irrepressible genre-rich set. They were agents of beautiful chaos, blending elements of punk, electronica, with a layer of flute or sax. A circle pit, a crowdsurfing drummer and a mosh pit during a flute solo were just some of the features of thirty whirlwind minutes (you can only imagine what Jethro Tull fans could have got up to if they’d thought of it first). They were genuinely arresting, partly in a raised heartbeat manner, but also in the sense that when they told us to get our hands up, there was no real option to say no. As they played I think I Like You, we knew we liked them. Or maybe it had turned into some kind of musical Stockholm Syndrome by then.
The day could have been rounded off with Richard Ashcroft on the Common (main) Stage or Faithless on the Castle (second) Stage. Timings permitted a quick burst of Space And Time from Mr Ashcroft before occupying Faithless’ more energetic space for the rest of the time that evening. What does an act do without someone as emblematic as Maxi Jazz? Simple answer – retain his vocals on a sound track and have him almost as present via graphics on the big screen. Insomnia was dropped in early. Immediately playing the song everyone wanted to hear not only ignited the party, but it also epitomised the set to come, proof that Faithless have more than just beats: they can play fast and slow, exhibit light and shade, loud and quiet. It was symphonic and exhilarating, gilded by the soaring vocals of Amelia Fox.
Scissor Sisters gave us a joyful earful and a frequently dazzling eyeful as they combined burlesque, vaudeville and Mardi Gras. They were one of many acts to pay tribute to Dolly Parton. On a soggy afternoon, there wasn’t a dry… well… anything in the house. It’s fifteen years since The Vaccines released What Do You Expect From The Vaccines? What most people have come to expect is for them to be such a reliable live act. And they were. Justin Hayward-Young looks like he should be a right poseur, but he couldn’t be more likeable. He even admitted to a Portsmouth crowd that he was born in Southampton and was seemingly absolved of his sins by the end of playing Teenage Icon.
Friday’s Steinbeck-style festival dust bowl also played host to the Scouse double-bill of Cast, who played Sandstorm (the irony was not lost on those wearing shades just to avoid a gritty iris) and The Coral, whose version of Dreaming Of You resulted in many an impromptu spilt pint (an ever-more costly festival error nowadays) from those who hadn’t planned to dance, but couldn’t help themselves.
Saturday 29th
Saturday was, in the words of Graham Lister from Vic Reeves’ Big Night Out, a ‘quality item’. In 2021, The Lottery Winners opened up the Common Stage around midday to a sparse crowd. In 2026, the field was full and this year (as I believe the young people say) they shut it down. They were imperious. Why they only had half an hour and why they were on mid-afternoon is anyone’s guess, but every second of the opportunity was maxed out, with Thom Rylance at the wheel, driving the bus like we were all in the film Speed. A fast and furious half hour included a chance for mass formation dancing (and mass swearing) in Turn Around, countless opportunities to laugh at their wit and smile at their warmth, as well as the line “I still believe in sunshine” in Feel Better, not long after Thom had waved his rain-dampened bum at the press corp and invited them to get a good photo of it. “See you when we headline,” said Thom as he left the stage. Bookers – please take note.
Nile Rodgers & Chic played what they described the next day as the windiest show they’d ever done. “This is a what we stand for,” Rodgers announced at the start of Good Times, whilst nearly being blown over by forty-mile-an-hour gales and thereby struggling to stand at all. (“This is some Wizard of Oz shit…”). Rodgers had his name on his guitar strap, which he’d have needed if he’d accidentally been rendered airborne and ended up in Chichester. It was also a handy reminder for parents with kids going back to school the following week to get those garments labelled. Playing new material at a festival often gets a groan, so it was delighted cheers all the way as they capitalised on having no new material whatsoever. They rolled from solid hit to solid hit, whilst reproducing the quality of the original artist, be that Sister Sledge, Diana Ross, Madonna or David Bowie. Rodgers refers to his band as ‘The Chic Organisation’. If they sold shares, you would surely invest.
Manchester’s The Covasettes were yet another Under The Trees act that didn’t sneak under the radar, and were another that should be all over the bigger stages in years to come. Chris Buxton reminded us that they had played the (now defunct) Introducing Stage in 2024 to twelve people, considerably fewer than saw them bounce through forty-five minutes of indie-pop, including Twit Twoo, Stop You There and the appropriately-titled What A Rush.
Little Grandad opened the Castle Stage, confirming to all present what Steve Lamacq had seen in them to invite them for a BBC session in January. The sun made an appearance as we were drenched by waves of three- and four-part harmonies and beautiful melancholic trumpet lines. For such a new band, tracks like Sleepwalking make them sound accomplished and long-established. No wonder they’ve sold out venues on their forthcoming tour.
Jessie J on the Common Stage was another artist that put huge smiles on faces. You can’t argue with a voice like hers and when artist and crowd look like they are having equal amounts of fun, you can’t beat moments like those. Force of personality alone made the set a winner, but she even seemed to have sufficient vocal force to subdue or repel the elements (until they came back to batter Nile Rodgers, that is).
Saturday’s headliners were The Black Keys (Common Stage) and Bastille (Castle Stage). Bastille returned to the same stage they headlined in 2022, with arguably more main-stage presence and energy than what was still a successful set back then. Dan Smith was more carefree, brimful of front man main character energy. The ‘Other People’s Heartache’ section in the middle turned the field into a club, including an unlikely but spectacular drum and bass version of Fleetwood Mac’s Dreams. Those who really, really wanted to hear Pompeii had to practise delayed gratification, making it all the more sweet when they closed the night with those bone-shaking drumbeats and the haunting, Teletubbies-adjacent “Eh-eh-oh” chants.
Doves overcame technical hitches to hit us with the sonic pounding they’re known and loved for. There Goes The Fear got the full samba band ending. Happy Mondays overcame whatever they’ve done to themselves over the past four decades to entertain the crowds at the Common Stage. Dizzee Rascal kicked off his afternoon set with Foxtrot Oscar, the opening track of his soon-to-be released album and sustained high levels of energy and profanity right through to the inevitable Bonkers. White Lies were faultless, but they did serve as a weird course of existential dread amongst the general perkiness of Saturday’s Common Stage fare.
Sunday 30th
Sunday was another day to be at Under The Trees, and not simply because there was shelter under the trees when it hosed down briefly but biblically at the end of Punchbag’s riotous set. Brother and sister combo Anders and Clara Bach have labelled their style ‘aggressive hopecore’, which comes through in the attack of the electro-punk arrangements and the rawness and compassion in the lyrics. Clara really knows how to electrify a crowd, even when that technically makes them a health and safety hazard in the rain.
A pleasingly large number of people decided to conclude their Victorious experience under the trees with Goldie Lookin Chain, eschewing Kasabian and Basement Jaxx in the process. GLC as a concept seems to work even better now that they are in their late forties and early fifties than it did in the noughties when they were daft young men. They’ve been putting Newport back on the map for twenty-six years and in their forty-five minutes, they gave us a snapshot of Cymreig culture via export-strength hits such as Your Missus Is A Nutter, Half Man Half Machine, Soap Bar, Guns Don’t Kill People Rappers Do, ending with everyone’s favourite song about a surprising maternal appendage. As long as you knew the context and didn’t mind the irony, it was glorious. One or two passers-by clearly didn’t know what to make of it and made themselves scarce very quickly.
Jalen Ngonda’s set was ideal Sunday evening music: the sort of music that allows you to exhale and decompress when feeling jaded. It felt like the best way to rest and recharge for the final hours of the festival. In a similar vein to the Chic Organization, everything about the band was polished and cohesive. Whether with guitar, piano or voice, Jalen Ngonda himself was masterful. It was fun to watch a few of the gamers raising their eyebrows during Just As Long As We’re Together and shouting “It’s that one from FC26!”
Bloodworm, from Nottingham, gave us rock for revenants, bringing the sort of seaside Gothic heaviness usually reserved for conventions in Whitby. Sleeper were the Britpop opposite on the Castle Stage. Sigrid gave us pure pop on the Common Stage, her set having all the attributes that made Jessie J’s set memorable on Saturday. James Walsh proved that all you need sometimes is a guitar and a voice and The Guest List proved that sometimes, you ought to believe the hype.
Basement Jaxx headlined the Castle Stage for those who wanted to end with a more theatrical party than you get from GLC and their bag of cans. If you were GLC-bound, you could still catch Good Luck and Bingo Bango, and soak up some of their flamboyant staging and costumes beforehand. By the time they concluded with Where’s Your Head At, some people had lost theirs in the frenzy. Mine, by that stage, was conceptually ‘in the middle of Lidl’ with some tracksuited Welsh rappers.
There’s so much to see and do at Victorious. GANS, The Lottery Winners, Jalen Ngonda and Goldie Lookin Chain may have been the highest points for one eclectic music nerd, but others will have delighted in The Streets, James Arthur, Kelis and Kate Nash. If you recall how much curious fun going into Woolworth’s used to be, then you’ll have a handle on what delightful variety the Victorious experience provides. If that reference blows directly over your head (like Nile Rodgers almost did to us), ask the nearest sentient human with greying hair and a bucket hat for clarification.
You can find information on all things Victorious here, including 2027’s festival.
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All words by Jon Kean. More writing by Jon on Louder Than War can be found at his author’s archive. He tweets as @keanotherapy
All photos © Simon Reed. His website is here and you can visit his author profile for Louder Than War here. He tweets as @musicalpix
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