"A different sort of celebration": How Limp Bizkit triumphed at their Download 2026 headliner

The colour red has been everywhere across Donington Park today. Some of it has been sunburn, but a lot of it has been red Fred Durst-style baseball caps. Download has a severe case of Bizkit fever, responsible for a low-level buzz all day that trumps the usual level of anticipation around headliners.

Download fact fans will remember that Limp Bizkit were meant to do this 23 years ago at the inaugural Download but dropped out and were replaced by Audioslave. Still, it’s only been in the last few years that it felt like a viable prospect again. Nu metal got thrown out like yesterday’s newspaper, their enthusiasm live lagged, and then there was Wes Borland’s phase of stepping in and out of the band like he was doing the hokey cokey.

Post-pandemic, as baggy jeans and aggy riffs became cool again, everything flipped. Limp Bizkit’s feral 2024 sub-headline slot made them a sort of honorary headliner, pulling a crowd denser than actual headliners Avenged Sevenfold. They’ve returned to claim the top spot at an impressively fast turnaround, even without much new music to promote. The setlist remains mostly the same, but nobody cares. They want the hits and they want them now.

Limp Bizkit’s set is a different sort of celebration. They acknowledge the death of bassist Sam Rivers immediately at the top of the set, along with the more recent loss of friend Dougie Millers. Both are mentioned multiple times, but in the sense of commemoration more than mourning. “We are all here to celebrate life and celebrate music,” Fred Durst says mid-set. Even the sentimentality of Behind Blue Eyes is accompanied with a call to crowdsurf for “all the ones we have lost”. Funeral music this is not. This is music to awake both your rebellious teenage self and put your monkey brain in the driver’s seat.

Of course, no song can awake that urge like now-traditional opener Break Stuff. Wes Borland – in a truly insane black outfit that covers his whole face, plume sprouting from his head – revs his guitar, but Fred cuts him off. “They ain’t ready for that yet!” They tantalizingly drag it out, pulling the string back and letting it fly in a gigantic eruption of rage and mayhem.

It’s all non-stop bangers from there. Equally impressive are the number of songs the average metalhead might know backwards almost without realising (and hey, if you know none of the words, they’re all on the screen behind them) and the brain-scratching power they have. There’s the snotty, gloriously profane Hot Dog - with a guest cameo from recent collaborator Lauren Sanderson – the snarling Take A Look Around and a cut-throat My Generation which is delivered with a delicious vein-bulging aggression bolstered by Wes’ unbeatably thick, filthy tone. Then, of course, thousands of people do the Rollin’ dance in union, and it’s as brilliant as it sounds on paper.

Limp Bizkit could just run from hit to hit, but they move at a more unexpected pace. Their usual practice of blasting pop from the PA – Spandau Ballet, Soft Cell, the more eyebrow-raising the better – stretches the set out, slowing the pace to a cruise rather than a sprint. There’d have been no complaints if they’d hammered it all out in an hour and a quarter, but they’re savouring it.

A crowd injury near the end of My Way keeps the music from playing for a good ten minutes, but Fred handles it with grace, watching a stretcher being brought out and communicating to the crowd what happens without feeling the need to fill the space. Their ingenious move of playing Break Stuff again doesn’t have the same explosive impact after this stalling of momentum, but this wasn’t to be helped. Nonetheless, it means the show ends on an upwards swing, in the sort of bonkers fashion only Limp Bizkit could. Your turn, Guns N’ Roses. Have fun following that.