Foo Throttle! How Foo Fighters conquered Welcome To Rockville 2026

“Heeyyyy!” howls Dave Grohl, igniting pent up frustration with feral intensity. “You had to wait all night for this shit, and we’ve got to squeeze in 31 years to this fuckin’ set. Are you ready?!”

Damn right, Rockville is ready. After severe thunderstorms saw the festival site evacuated for a couple of hours, leading some acts to cancel altogether, the Foo Fighters frontman leads his band on as the unyielding hero, ready to save the day at the literal eleventh hour. Opening with a cover of Late!’s Winnebago, the first song Foos ever jammed together, isn’t the barn-burning beginning most would want as the clock ticks towards midnight, but a tarmac-rattling All My Life sets shit off.

“We’ve played shows before where the weather has fucked stuff up,” Dave pauses for breath after the initial onslaught, the lights going up on a massive main stage crowd. “Everybody goes away to their cars and I always wonder whether they’ll come back. So I’m very thankful that you have. And now we’re all here? We’re going to play songs and you’ll sing along until they pull the plug!”

It’s been a busy 2026 already for Dave and the boys. Back in January, they romped a handful of big one-off shows – Mexico’s Feria de León, Los Angeles’ Kia Forum, a landmark stadium headline in Tasmania – but since then they’ve been fuelling the hype train for 12th album Your Favorite Toy with more intimate engagements. From London’s 2,000-cap O2 Shepherd’s Bush Empire to the 80-cap St James’ Church in Dingle, Ireland, small rooms have routinely been reduced to rubble.

All of which makes their return to this jewel of massive American festivals even more intriguing. Not that there’s any danger of them having forgotten how to absolutely own nights like this, of course. Twenty-four years since they first stepped up as festival headliners at Reading & Leeds 2002, they’ve amassed a sizeable box of tricks. Songs from that era, Times Like These, Stacked Actors, My Hero and Learn To Fly, have lost none of their affecting warmth or neck-wrecking high impact. Earthquaking hits from the time in-between, The Pretender and Best Of You prove why they became one of the biggest bands on Earth. And tonight’s sparingly-deployed new songs, Of All The People and Your Favorite Toy itself, prove they’ve still got the spark in spades.

Indeed, it’s a balance of stadium-sized accessibility and affecting intimacy many bands would kill for. Shifting between the punky jangle of This Is A Call, the raw emotion of Aurora, dedicated to late drummer Taylor Hawkins, and the unhinged high energy of Monkey Wrench in the space of three songs at one point, Foos are in a class of their own when it comes to emotional dexterity wielded with easygoing cool. They’re rock gods, yeah, but still ones you’d grab a burger with.

Ravenous as this crowd is, there’s no time for snacking or slacking here, nor any real pre-encore fucking about before they wrench heartstrings one last time with inevitable closer Everlong.

“We don’t say goodbye to audiences because we like the idea that some day we might see you again,” Dave signs off with sweaty sincerity and the worldly poignancy of an elder statesman who’s seen too much tragedy and triumph. “So this is our way of saying thank you – and not goodbye.”

Even after 1am the tens of thousands in Daytona are hanging on every word and, fate permitting, you’d bet every one of them will be here again next time these legends come back round the bend.

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