Leading the charge at Reading and Leeds 2025: The future headliners you’d be a fool to miss
I remember it like it was yesterday. It’s 2014, my friends and I huddled around the radio, waiting for the Reading and Leeds Festival announcement.
We were all in a band, only young; the beers we drank were done so illegally, and the dreams we had of one day playing such a festival were ambitious. We had been there two years prior, catching acts like Two Door Cinema Club, Kasabian and The Cure, all of whom further instilled this idea that we should be rockstars. Those weekends framed the people we would become, as realists and dreamers.
For me, and I assume a great deal of people who go, those weekends at Reading and Leeds are some of the greatest and most significant days of your life. It’s the first time you see so many of your favourite bands live, it’s the first time you get (proper) drunk, and the first time you leave somewhere a die-hard fan of an act you’ve never come across before.
I can see that font, those red and yellow colours, and still hear the chatter of my friends outside of the boiling hot pop-up tent I’d only bought the day before. I feel the blisters on my feet, the ringing in my ears, and a burning taste at the back of my throat, which I can’t get rid of (I didn’t know what acid reflux was yet). But damn, it was stuff like that that made me know I loved music. I was obsessed from the onset, and yet, as my bandmates and I huddled around that radio in 2014, I was only greeted by a feeling of bitter disappointment.
“Queens of the Stone Age and Paramore? Two headliners?” I was in disbelief. This was the first year (to my knowledge) that the festival had opted to move away from having one huge headliner on one of the nights and instead get two relatively big bands to do it. These days, Queens of the Stone Age and Paramore are headliners in their own right, but back then, they were second-stage royalty or main-stage supports, far from being headline acts.
It felt like a cop out to me, one that screamed of the festival being unable to secure one main act, so instead opting for two smaller ones. I recognise now that that wasn’t the case. It’s worth pointing out that in 2014, smaller festivals and day festivals weren’t as common. The majority of the large-scale music events took place over a weekend and only put the biggest names in the industry at the top of their bill. For context, the other two headliners in 2014 were Arctic Monkeys and Blink-182, so you see what I mean?
Making the jump to headliner was incredibly hard for bands, and it was also hard for festivals to be the first to take the risk on said bands, given how high the public’s expectations were. The two headliner move was a great idea that allowed the festival to showcase who they believed were future headliners, to take a risk, but also minimise potential losses in the process. I came out of that weekend having seen Queens of the Stone Age and Paramore, recognising their musical prowess, knowing that in the years to come, when they top festival bills on their own, it would be a spot well earned.
The two headliner experience was a risk, but the truth is, the festival has always been open to taking risks on artists. Stuart Braithwaite has an excellent section in his book, Spaceships Over Glasgow, where he talks about seeing Nirvana for the first time at Reading Festival. This is before the days of Nevermind, when the band still had a long way to go, but were given a stage on that occasion to preach to the not-yet-converted.
Naturally, some of these bargains also didn’t pay off. For instance, there is the famous clip of 50 Cent taking to the stage with G Unit while the weekend was still predominantly rock heavy and getting bottles thrown at him till he was forced to leave. While the festival saw where the direction of rap music and a musician like 50 Cent was headed, the crowd weren’t willing to embrace it.
I wonder what that crowd would think these days? Reading and Leeds has always championed popular artists, and that was easy to do when popular music fit into one or two genres. These days, popularity is such a broad spectrum that it becomes impossible to cater a weekend towards what is doing well and remain cohesive. 2025 is proof of that, as artists like Limp Bizkit, 21 Savage, Hozier and Travis Scott are all set to perform.
Credit where it’s due, the festival continues to take risks even during a period where merely pinning down a decent line-up is a difficult task. For instance, despite only being a mainstream artist for little over a year, Chappel Roan finds herself at the top of the bill. Equally, opting to have a line-up that is so haphazard is also just as big a risk, as with the plethora of other festivals available to the public now, some would rather choose one day of rap music rather than an entire weekend of Reading and Leeds for the sake of a few slots of rap.
In the face of the constant risks the festival has taken, alongside their modern approach to branching out and including as many genres as possible, what is seen as a bit of a party festival is actually a music lover’s dream. That variety doesn’t just exist at the top of the line-up, but trickles down into all of the support acts and the different stages. If you want to discover new bands that have an interesting style and a unique sound, all you need to do is wander around Reading and Leeds, poking your head into whatever tent has music coming from it.
With that, we at Far Out figured it would be worth diverting your eyeline down a bit, taking a moment to appreciate the mixed bag on offer, but exploring that variety in some of the newer acts performing. Make no mistake, these will be climbing up the line-up in the same way we have seen so many others do in the past; they’re just building up to it.
From indie to pop to rock to rap to metal, every style of music you could possibly want is represented by these bands that you may not have heard of until today. Our favourite artists, alongside their greatest songs, are all listed below, in a playlist of 20 future headliners that you’d be a fool to miss out on. Whether you’re heading to the festival or merely perusing the line-up, give some of these a listen.
20 future headliners to not miss at Reading and Leeds
- Sofia Isella – ‘Muse’
- Been Stellar – ‘Breakaway’
- Jasmine. 4.t – ‘Guy Fawkes Tesco Dissociation’
- Heartworms – ‘Just to Ask a Dance’
- Overpass – ‘Right Time’
- Sunday (1994) – ‘Tired Boy’
- VLURE – ‘Feels Like Heaven’
- Nxdia – ‘She Likes A Boy’
- The Pill – ‘Woman Driver’
- Luvcat – ‘Blushing’
- Nell Mescal – ‘Carried Away’
- Antony Szmierek – ‘The Great Pyramid of Stockport’
- Del Water Gap – ‘Ode to a Conversation Stuck in Your Throat’
- Radio Free Alice – ‘Empty Words’
- Cliffords – ‘My Favourite Monster’
- Keo – ‘I Lied, Amber’
- Nieve Ella – ‘Good Grace’
- SNAYX – ‘Strut’
- Good Health Good Wealth – ‘The Cafe’
- Girl Group – ‘Shut Your Mouth (Sometimes)’
