Tramlines 2026 Day Two Review: Courteeners Rule Saturday

Courteeners delivered the huge festival singalong everyone expected, while Blossoms, Sleeper and Inspiral Carpets helped Saturday trace several generations of British guitar music.

After Friday brought The Coral, The Vaccines and Kaiser Chiefs to Hillsborough Park, Tramlines 2026 used its second day to dig even deeper into northern indie history.

Saturday’s sold-out bill stretched from the baggy pulse of Inspiral Carpets and the Britpop bite of Sleeper to the polished indie-pop of Blossoms and the fiercely devoted following surrounding Courteeners. Around them, Sheffield talent and emerging guitar bands ensured this was not simply another afternoon spent recycling the same festival favourites.

It was a day built around familiarity, but familiarity is not automatically a weakness. Sometimes a festival crowd wants to discover its new favourite band. Sometimes it wants to throw an arm around a complete stranger and shout Not Nineteen Forever at the sky.

Saturday provided room for both.

Sheffield opens its own party

The Leadmill Studio Orchestra opened the main stage before The Everly Pregnant Brothers brought their distinctly Sheffield approach to festival entertainment.

The parody group have become closely tied to Tramlines, offering something few major festivals can genuinely reproduce: an act whose jokes, references and personality belong specifically to the city hosting the event.

That local identity continued through Freddie Halkon, while The Leadmill Stage featured emerging acts including Keyside, Girl in the Year Above, The Guest List and Seb Lowe. The smaller-stage programme gave Saturday a stronger sense of movement than the headliners alone might suggest.

Sleeper bring Britpop sharpness back to the main stage

Sleeper’s afternoon appearance offered a welcome reminder that the 1990s British guitar revival contained considerably more personality than the handful of bands usually used to represent it.

Louise Wener remains one of Britpop’s sharpest and most distinctive frontpeople, while Sleeper’s songs have survived because there was always more beneath their immediate hooks. Their music mixed glamour, frustration and wit without drifting into the self-importance that swallowed several of their contemporaries.

A short main-stage slot meant there was little time for subtlety, but Sleeper have a catalogue suited to quick impact. Their presence also gave the main stage something it needed. Saturday’s biggest names were overwhelmingly male-fronted, and Sleeper brought a different voice, perspective and slice of British rock history to the day.

Rick Astley understands the assignment

Rick Astley occupied the unusual middle ground between novelty booking, pop institution and fully proven festival performer.

He was not central to Saturday’s British rock story, but his place on the bill made sense. His set provided a broad crowd-pleasing bridge between Sleeper’s Britpop and the two major indie bands still to come.

Blossoms prove they belong near the top of festival bills

Blossoms have spent much of the last decade quietly becoming one of Britain’s most reliable large-stage bands.

The Stockport group can sometimes be dismissed as too polished, as though writing clean melodies and performing them competently were suspicious activities. Yet their rise has been built on consistency. Four UK number-one albums, an increasingly deep singles catalogue and years of touring have turned them into something more substantial than the fashionable indie newcomers they once appeared to be.

Songs such as Charlemagne, Your Girlfriend, Gary and There’s a Reason Why (I Never Returned Your Calls) have given them a set capable of holding a large outdoor crowd without relying on distortion or forced festival theatrics.

That attitude translated naturally to Hillsborough Park. Their melodic, synth-heavy indie provided contrast without breaking the day’s wider guitar-led identity.

Inspiral Carpets offer the strongest alternative

While Blossoms occupied the main stage, Inspiral Carpets provided one of Saturday’s most important British rock sets on T’Other Stage.

The Manchester group’s combination of psychedelic organ, garage-rock guitars and dance-influenced rhythm helped define the sound surrounding the city at the end of the 1980s. Their importance extends beyond nostalgia. They remain part of the connective tissue linking northern post-punk, psychedelia, Madchester, Britpop and the generations of indie bands that followed.

The band’s current live performances have mixed staples such as She Comes in the Fall, Move, Two Worlds Collide and This Is How It Feels with more recent material. It is a catalogue capable of sounding both rooted in its era and strangely resistant to it.

Both belonged at Tramlines.

Courteeners turn Hillsborough Park into one enormous choir

Courteeners arrived with no mystery surrounding what was expected of them.

The Manchester band were there to produce the biggest guitar singalong of the weekend so far. Anything less would have felt like a failure.

Their set began with Sheffield receiving its own small acknowledgement as Pulp’s Common People played before the band appeared. Courteeners then opened properly with Sweet Surrender before moving quickly through Are You in Love With a Notion? and Cavorting.

The opening sequence immediately established the balance of the night. This would not be a simple St. Jude nostalgia show, but neither would Liam Fray make the fatal festival mistake of hiding the songs people had spent all day waiting to hear.

New track Plus One Forever also appeared in the set, continuing Courteeners’ movement towards their forthcoming greatest-hits collection. Rather than sounding awkward beside the established favourites, it reinforced the sense of a band currently looking both backwards and forwards.

Hanging Off Your Cloud opened the encore, followed by Modern Love, Not Nineteen Forever and What Took You So Long? It was a closing sequence requiring very little critical explanation. Those songs were built for exactly this environment: darkness settling over a northern field, shoulders occupied by people with questionable balance and every lyric being returned towards the stage.

For the people inside that crowd, Not Nineteen Forever is no longer merely an indie single released in 2008. It has become attached to friendships, hometowns, first gigs, relationships and years that disappeared faster than expected. When thousands sing it together, they are not simply celebrating Courteeners. They are briefly recovering versions of themselves.

That is why the band can headline festivals. It is also why Saturday belonged to them.

Tramlines Day Two verdict

Day Two was a celebration of British guitar music across generations.

Sleeper represented Britpop’s sharper edges. Inspiral Carpets carried the strange energy of Madchester into another decade. Blossoms showed how modern indie can become genuinely mainstream without abandoning its regional character. Courteeners closed the night by demonstrating that emotional connection will always matter more than critical fashion.

There were newer names throughout the programme, but Saturday’s central story was the enduring strength of northern bands and northern audiences.

James Waddingham
Collaborator, BritRock Heaven