There are festival line-ups that look good on a poster, and then there are line-ups that make even more sense once you are standing in the middle of them. Our All Points East 2026 review looks at the performances, surprise guests and musical connections that made Jorja Smith and Tems’ Friday takeover one of the festival’s most culturally cohesive line-ups.
For the opening Friday of All Points East 2026, Jorja Smith and her FAMM label helped curate a bill that moved between R&B, Afrobeats, jungle, drum and bass, UK garage and the sounds that sit somewhere between them. The result felt less like a collection of artists booked around two major headliners and more like a snapshot of where London, and British music more broadly, currently finds itself: increasingly global, proudly diasporic and still drawing from musical movements that have been evolving in the city for decades.
ENNY kicks off a day rooted in Black British music. Distract arrived in time to catch the closing stretch of ENNY’s set, including the instantly recognisable ‘Peng Black Girls’. It felt like a fitting place to begin.
Released in 2020, the South London rapper’s breakout track became a celebration of Black women and Black British identity, later receiving a remix featuring Jorja Smith herself. From there, our attention shifted towards two artists whose crowds made their growing status particularly hard to ignore.
Odeal and Ayra Starr show how quickly the next generation is growing
Odeal brought his smooth fusion of R&B and Afro-influenced sounds to the West Stage, with ‘Soh-Soh‘ among the tracks that landed immediately with the crowd. Uncle Waffles brought another side of the continent’s sound to the festival, delivering amapiano with the kind of energy that has helped turn the Swazi-born, South Africa-based DJ into a viral sensation.
Her set was as much performance as it was DJing. Moving between the decks and choreography, Waffles was joined by dancers who felt like an extension of her own stage presence, carrying the rhythm and movement of the music across the stage. The result captured much of what has made amapiano such a global force, pairing deep bass, rolling percussion and its distinctive log-drum rhythms with a dance culture that is almost inseparable from the sound itself.
That energy continued into Ayra Starr, who delivered one of the clearest signs of demand we saw all day. The Nigerian star had been placed inside the North Arena, but by the time her set was underway, the tent felt far too small for the audience trying to get inside. Fans packed the space and spilled beyond its edges, making it difficult to properly see the performance unless you had arrived early; one of those festival moments where the crowd tells you everything you need to know. Ayra Starr probably needs a bigger All Points East stage next time.
Her popularity also says something about the increasingly blurred distinction between what is considered “international” and what is simply part of young London’s everyday musical vocabulary. Afrobeats and its neighbouring sounds are no longer sitting at the edges of British youth culture, they are firmly embedded within it.
One downside of such a stacked line-up was just how tightly some of the sets ran together. With artists we genuinely wanted to see spread across different stages, there were moments where moving from one performance to the next meant cutting sets short or arriving part-way through. It is a good problem for a festival to have, but still not ideal for music fans. With a little more breathing room between key performances, it would have been easier to properly enjoy the strength of the line-up rather than constantly watching the clock.
Katy B takes Victoria Park back to the rave
One of the day’s most joyful bursts of nostalgia came courtesy of Katy B on the West Stage. From the opening moments of her set, tracks including ‘Katy on a Mission‘ and ‘Lights On‘ pulled Victoria Park back towards the early 2010s, when Katy, Rinse FM and the surrounding club scene helped push underground British dance music further into the mainstream. Hearing ‘Lights On‘ in Victoria Park in 2026 did not feel like empty nostalgia either. Because rave culture is firmly back in the conversation. Or perhaps more accurately, it never completely went away.
A younger generation is increasingly reconnecting with drum and bass, jungle, UK garage and the wider visual language of British rave culture. At the same time, artists who helped define earlier eras are now performing alongside musicians actively reshaping those sounds for a new audience. Katy herself sits directly inside that cycle. Her newer material continues to nod towards the sounds that made her name, including her recent collaboration with Jax Jones, ‘Last Day of Summer‘, which leans into jungle-inspired production while still sounding unmistakably like Katy B.
Distract also caught up with Katy backstage during the festival to talk music, rave culture and more. Look out for our interview with Katy B, coming soon.
Nia Archives brings jungle to a new generation
If Katy B represented one part of Britain’s club lineage, Nia Archives showed where that lineage is heading next. Her West Stage performance was one of the most energetic sets we caught all day. Against striking visuals filling the screens behind her, Nia moved between vocals, production and DJing with the frantic breakbeats and bass that have made her one of the most visible artists in jungle’s new generation.
The significance goes beyond revivalism. Jungle emerged from Britain’s early 1990s rave landscape, shaped by Black British and Caribbean creativity, sound-system culture, reggae, ragga, soul, hip-hop and electronic experimentation. Its evolution into drum and bass would go on to become one of Britain’s most influential musical exports. Watching a largely young festival crowd respond to Nia decades later felt less like seeing the past recreated and more like watching that musical history being passed forward. Elsewhere on site, the Shy FX X Stage takeover strengthened that connection even further.
Old rave, new rave, same family tree.
Tems commands the East Stage, then Dave appears
As evening moved in, Tems brought a different kind of energy to Victoria Park. Her voice was naturally the centrepiece, but there was also a playful charisma to the performance, with Tems regularly interacting with the crowd and seeming completely at ease on the huge East Stage.
Her live band added another layer. The natural rhythms, percussion and rolling beats running through the set gave the music a warmth and physicality that translated particularly well in the festival setting, allowing Tems to move comfortably between more reflective moments and tracks built to make the crowd move.
Songs including ‘Free Mind,’ ‘Me & U‘ and recent single ‘What You Need‘ showed those different sides of her sound, before the energy shifted sharply when one of Britain’s biggest rappers walked onto the stage.
Dave joined Tems for ‘Raindance‘, triggering one of the loudest reactions of the day. It was another crossover that made perfect sense within this particular line-up. A Nigerian artist who has become a global force was joined in the middle of East London by one of Britain’s defining contemporary rappers, himself British-Nigerian. That connection made the moment feel even more fitting within a day where musical ideas seemed to travel constantly between Britain and West Africa. Tems, Ayra Starr and Odeal each represented different points within that exchange, while their influence could also be heard more widely across contemporary British R&B, rap and pop.
Jorja Smith turns her headline set into a celebration of her world
By the time Jorja Smith finally took the East Stage, the thinking behind the day’s programming became even clearer. Her set could easily have functioned as a straightforward career retrospective. Instead, she repeatedly opened the stage up to artists from the musical worlds surrounding her.
Odeal returned for ‘Coming Home‘. Kyla appeared for ‘Do You Mind‘. Nia Archives came back out for their collaboration ‘Get Me Down‘. AJ Tracey brought ‘Ladbroke Grove‘. Loyle Carner joined Jorja for ‘Loose Ends’, while Devlin appeared for ‘This City‘.
Then came one of the night’s most charming full-circle moments.
A clip played of a teenage Jorja singing ‘Katy on a Mission‘, before Katy B herself emerged onto the stage to perform the track alongside her. It captured what had made the festival work. This was not simply nostalgia placed beside new music. The influence was happening in real time. The artists who soundtracked one generation’s nights out are now sharing stages with musicians who grew up listening to them, and those younger artists are taking those sounds somewhere new again.
A London line-up built for the culture
What unfolded across Victoria Park was a reminder of how closely London’s musical identity is tied to sounds travelling between Britain, Africa, the Caribbean and beyond.
R&B emerged from Black American musical traditions. Afrobeats grew from generations of West African artists drawing from highlife, hip-hop, dancehall and other global influences. Amapiano, born in South Africa, has become one of the continent’s biggest musical exports, carrying its distinctive rhythms and dance culture far beyond its origins. In Britain, Black British and Caribbean communities helped shape everything from sound-system culture and lovers rock to jungle, drum and bass, garage and grime.
These histories are not identical, but they continually intersect. And on Friday at All Points East, they met in Victoria Park. That may ultimately be what separated this line-up from a festival bill built simply around streaming figures. There were established stars, emerging artists and nostalgic favourites, but there was also a visible musical lineage running between them.
ENNY to Jorja. Katy B to Nia Archives. Shy FX to a new generation of ravers. Ayra Starr and Tems connecting London with West Africa.
The schedule sometimes made it difficult to experience every artist as fully as we would have liked, but perhaps that also says something about the strength of the day. There were simply too many performances worth seeing. A week later, the guest appearances are memorable and Dave walking onto the East Stage was undeniably a moment. But the bigger takeaway is the ecosystem around them.
Jorja Smith and FAMM did not just assemble an impressive list of names. They built a line-up that understood where the music came from, where it is now and where it might be heading next.
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