Just to further whet your appetites and give you a little more of a flavour for how the bill is shaping up, and what to expect at this year’s Greenbelt Festival, we’re pleased to announce another slice of names to brighten up what has been a pretty dreary February. As we said with our New Year’s announcements, these are by no means the only (or biggest) names we have lined up – but just another taster of what’s in store.
MUSIC
BCUC
Describing their music as a weapon of political and spiritual liberation, Soweto’s agents of consciousness return to Greenbelt with material from their acclaimed new album The Road is Never Easy – identified by one reviewer as “gospel sermon colliding with a punk concert”. You can see why we simply had to get them back to the festival.
CAPYAC
Making their Greenbelt debut, Los Angeles based CAPYAC merge 70s funk, soul, UK garage, and synthwave, in a heady mix sometimes referred to as “surrealist musical wave”. Specialising in finding beauty in life’s contradictions, they’ll be joined on stage by stand-up improv artist Reggie Watts for what promises to be something totally unique.
JUNIOR BROTHER
Nominated for the RTE Choice Music Prize ‘Album of the Year for 2025’, Junior Brother’s debut record, The End, has garnered plaudits from all corners for its rejuvenation – perhaps even the reinvention – of traditional Irish music. The Quietus describes his sound as “Traditional Irish instrumentation … pushed into strange and eerie new climes,” while MOJO says simply that it is “A giddy marvel.” We can’t wait!
ROSE BETTS
Rose Betts has been described by the F Word Magazine as where “heart, humour and honesty collide.” Drawing deeply on her Irish roots and her English upbringing, her songs and sound are strangely familiar and comforting – while also ethereal and others-worldly. Her music is at once instant and infectious at the same time as deep and mysterious.
SHLOMO & THE GOB ORCHESTRA
We’re thrilled to welcome Shlomo back to Greenbelt with their latest – and possibly most ambitious – project ever: the GOB orchestra! Billed as the world’s first trans+ and non-binary beatboxing orchestra, it’s a project lovingly created with and for young marginalised people.
ST CATHERINE’S CHILD
A rising star of the Indie Folk/Americana scene, Ilana Zsigmond (AKA St. Catherine’s Child) was born in England to musical parents, but spent the majority of her childhood in New Haven, Connecticut, bouncing back and forth between continents as her parents toured. Named for the patron saint of eloquent women, St. Catherine’s Child provides the perfect vehicle for her vocal strength and poetic songwriting.
IDEAS & COMEDY
CATHY NEWMAN
Multi-award-winning broadcaster and writer, Cathy Newmand was Channel 4 News’ first female anchor and spent 20 years with the programme before moving to Sky News this April. Cathy comes to Greenbelt to be in conversation with Andrew Graystone about the changing relationship between politics, news and truth; the role of journalism in changing times; misogyny in and out of the industry; and whether she has a vendetta against the church. (Perhaps her biggest ‘scoop’ was an eight-year investigation unmasking the most prolific abuser in the Church of England, barrister John Smyth, that led to the then Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby being forced out of office.)
MINA SMALLMAN
Mina Smallman has lived through the unimaginable. On Saturday 6 June 2020, her daughters, Bibaa Henry and Nicole Smallman, were killed in a park by a male stranger as they celebrated Bibaa’s birthday. And MIna has been fighting for justice ever since – for her daughters, and for the rest of us, by challenging the toxic culture in the Metropolitan Police and calling out the wider institutional misogyny, racism and classism in Britain.
REGGIE WATTS
An internationally renowned musician, comedian, writer and actor, Reggie Watts most recently starred as the bandleader on CBS’s The Late Late Show with James Corden. Using his formidable voice, looping pedals, and his vast imagination, Watts blends and blurs the lines between music and comedy, wowing audiences with performances that are always 100% improvised. His first Netflix special Spatial released to massive critical acclaim, with the New York Times calling it “a giddy rush of escapist nonsense” and dubbing Watts “the most influential absurdist in comedy today.”
ROBIN INCE
Robin makes a welcome return to Greenbelt after almost 20 years with his powerful and personal book on his ADHD diagnosis, Normally Weird and Weirdly Normal. Using his own diagnosis, he explores the fascinating world of neurodivergence, asking what ‘normal’ really is – and whether it even exists – in his own quirky and witty style.
There is so much more still to share about this year’s Greenbelt Festival bill – more music, more ideas, more comedy, plus indoor and outdoor theatre, worship and spirituality, workshops, children’s, family and youth programming – and those unpigeonholeable Greenbelt ‘institutions’ (like the OK Chorale and Beer and Hymns). We also have a returning crop of festival favourite artists booked in for our final year at Boughton House to help us celebrate the ending of this festival chapter in style.
Watch this space.
To read about the first names we announced for this year’s lineup, click here.
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Shlomo and the GOB Orchestra: Rah Petherbridge Art & Photography
BCUC: Tim Bugbee Tinnitus Photography
Rose Betts: Catie Laffoon
Junior Brother: Ellius Grace
Reggie Watts: Haley Scott
Robin Ince: Trent Burton + The Cosmic Shambles Network