On Monday 31 August, LIDO Festival wrapped its 2026 edition on Lido Field with a bill that moved from soul and drum and bass to techno and back again. Maribou State closed the night with a set built for the occasion, but it was Kelis, several hours earlier, who gave the day its defining moment.

Long before headline time, Alabaster DePlume set the tone for the day, his saxophone cutting through the early crowd with a warmth that had nothing to do with the weather. Between songs, he turned his attention to the people working the festival rather than the people watching it: “Thank you for living,” he told the crowd.

Lady Wray brought the afternoon its first real dose of soul, her voice riding golden, modern R&B cuts with total command regardless of what the sky was doing. “Come rain or shine,” she told the crowd, “let’s keep this show going”, and the crowd needed little encouragement.

If LIDO had a single unmissable moment, it belonged to Kelis. Twice Grammy-nominated and armed with two decades of genuine hits, she moved through her catalogue with the ease of someone who knows exactly what a festival crowd wants and exactly when to give it to them, ‘Milkshake’ and ‘Trick Me’ sitting comfortably alongside the André 3000 collaboration ‘Millionaire’. The unmistakable hook of ‘Caught Out There’ landed as hard as it ever has, sung back at full volume by a crowd who clearly weren’t there for nostalgia alone. Mid-set detours into Nirvana’s ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ and Donna Summer’s ‘I Feel Love’ only underlined how wide her range really is, an artist treating a festival slot as a chance to celebrate pop and soul history.

It wasn’t just the setlist. Kelis worked the stage in bright pink trousers and a gold Celine bomber jacket, radiating a star quality that made the whole set feel like an event rather than a slot on a bill. Her band matched her energy beat for beat, a visibly delighted drummer, backing vocals with real power behind them, and a system arranger clearly having as much fun as the crowd. It was, by some distance, the set of the festival.

She handed off to Folamour, whose blend of soul, funk, disco and Afrobeat kept the dancefloor full straight through the changeover, a smart piece of sequencing that eased the crowd from Kelis’s pop showmanship into the heavier, more rhythm-driven territory still to come.

While the main stage carried the day’s biggest names, LIDO’s satellite stages made their own case for the festival’s reputation as a genuine tastemaker’s event. The Second Stage delivered one of the weekend’s most talked-about pairings, Theo Parrish and Moodymann trading tracks back-to-back, alongside sets from Calibre, Marie Davidson and MADMADMAD. Over on the Third Stage, drum and bass originator LTJ Bukem gave a packed crowd a lesson in the genre he helped invent, while producer and songwriter Kelly Lee Owens laid down a set of her own beats to an audience that showed no sign of wanting to be anywhere else. Her final track was well-chosen, Underworld’s hit brought everyone together.

Away from the stages, the day’s party spirit spilled into the brand activations. Bacardi’s house stage and the Casamigos booth kept the music going between sets, with the Bacardi setup in particular channelling the energy of a Bad Bunny casita, all Latin rhythms and a crowd that never quite stopped moving.

By the time Chris Davids and Liam Ivory walked out to close the night, Victoria Park had already absorbed two weekends of headline sets from All Points East. Somehow, Maribou State still made it feel like the biggest show of their tour.

This was no stripped-back closing slot, either. The duo brought out a choir, strings and a small orchestra, while huge screens behind them ran a stream of abstract visuals that turned the whole set into something closer to a production than a DJ-adjacent live show.

For featured vocalist Talulah Ruby, the night carried extra weight. “I used to live by this park,” she told the crowd. “This is a dream come true for me.” A drum solo punctuated ‘Dance on the World’ before the set dropped into the slamming rhythm of ‘Rituals’ and the low-end pressure of ‘The Clown’, a run that showed off both the duo’s live-band instincts and their production polish in the same handful of songs.

It was before ‘Midas’, though, that Davids addressed the elephant in the park. Maribou State had already announced a hiatus, and this was billed as their last show for a while. He didn’t pretend otherwise: “When Liam and I first started this over 15 years ago, we never could imagine the music we played tonight, that we made in the shed in his parents’ back garden.” He thanked the crowd for over a decade of support before adding the line that made headlines of its own: this might be the last show for a little while, “but it’s most definitely not the end.” Between the orchestration, the visuals and the sentiment behind it, it felt like the perfect final show of an already remarkable tour.

There’s a version of this festival that leans entirely on nostalgia, a duo saying goodbye, a headliner-in-waiting with two decades of hits behind her, DJs who’ve been shaping their genres for longer than some of the crowd have been alive. What made LIDO’s closing night work was how little it actually traded on that. It felt like a pure moment of joy with class-acts and fantastic entertainment.

On the evidence of Monday Bank Holiday night, whenever Kelis comes back, Victoria Park will be waiting.

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