Harry Styles to play The Southbank Centre's Meltdown festival 2026

In a big “get” for one of London’s key cultural hubs, the Southbank Centre has announced Harry Styles will curate this year’s Meltdown festival.

And, yep, that means he will play during the festival himself too, despite being capable of selling out venues many, many times the capacity.

Later this year Harry Styles will play a 12-night residency at London’s Wembley Stadium, meaning somewhere in the region of a million tickets are out there for his shows. But the Southbank Centre? Its Royal Festival hall has space for somewhere in the region of a mere 2,500 people.

The Styles list

The Harry Styles “headline concert” at Meltdown will be one of the hottest tickets of the year. But, as ever, the festival itself is about much more than just the headliner.

Meltdown will consist of “11 days of music, dancing and community.” It’s the 31st year of the festival, and marks the 75th anniversary of the Southbank Centre itself.

“My goal as the curator is to share the music and art that I love, and to celebrate the rich history of the venue,” says Harry Styles.

“We both share a passionate belief that music is a vital part of life. It brings us together and the Southbank Centre has been at the heart of it, providing easy access to great music for the past 75 years.”

As yet no other acts have been announced, but we do know the dates for this one.

Meltdown 2026 runs from June 11th to June 21st, and we’ll get to hear more about the line-up as those dates approach. It’s teased as a blend of “pop, soul, electronic and rock to underground scenes and emerging young British talent.”

In 2025, Little Simz curated Meltdown, with her concert landing on Sunday 22nd June. So keep Sunday June 21st free if you want to be in with a chance of seeing Styles at Meltdown, when we expect his headliner set to land.

Other key acts from last year’s line-up included James Blake, The Streets, Jon Batiste, Lola Young and Sasha Keable, although Kara Jackson was the performance we checked out first-hand last year.

The Southbank Centre announced its first wave of 2025 acts in late March, and we’ll be on the hunt for further information on Meltdown 2026 nearer to that time.

• The BIG London gig list 2026: Your guide to this year's very best shows, festivals and concerts

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