FORWARDS PRESENTS: LORDE, BRISTOL, UK
Lorde with Djo, Maisie Peters + More
FORWARDS Presents: Lorde, Bristol, UK - 28/08/2026
words by Dylan Wyeth
Forwards Festival, Image by @Eljaybriss
FORWARDS Bristol is a festival changing the game in sustainable events, leading positive change and proving city music festivals can be done sustainably. FORWARDS: Presents and the FORWARDS Festival are the twelfth live music and film/tv production this summer to be decarbonised. Both of the festival’s main stages, as well as the production areas, are powered through clean power solutions; the West Stage was powered by GeoPura, in which no fumes or carbon emissions are produced while powering the stage, with the only waste being drinkable water; the East Stage was powered by Greener Power Solutions using smart batteries that travelled only five miles to the festival site. The festival featured compostable toilets, food waste being composted into soil and mulch and a strong public transport initiative. Over the weekend, the FORWARDS Festival had additional events including a Kids’ Area and an Information stage. The information stage is a dedicated space at FORWARDS with workshops and displays led by local charity organisations, put on alongside a series of talks focussing on providing a platform for urgent discussions.
The festival also collaborated with FlixBus and First Bus to provide transport to the festival. There was no on-site parking; instead, a taxi/Uber drop-off point was allocated, and a shuttle bus with First Bus was provided, allowing seamless travel from Bristol Temple Meads, the City Centre and the festival site. The bus was the first taste of the festival atmosphere, a double-decker full of fans singing songs and planning the upcoming day; who they would like to see the most, planning drinks, food and toilet trips.
Throughout the day, performances by Kat CW, Girl Group, Grove, Esha Tewari, Rose Gray and Audrey Hobert took place across both the East and West stages, building up to the performances of Maisie Peters, Djo and, of course, Lorde. This evening marked both Djo and Lorde’s first performances in Bristol and hopefully not their last. When speaking on the event during her set, Lorde noted that: “A while ago, when I found out the festival was fully clean powered, that resonated so much with me. As you know, I have an album called Solar Power, and it’s cool to me because it’s actually harder than we think to do the right thing, you know. There are always so many roadblocks and so many reasons why we don’t do the right thing, and we tell ourselves it’s too expensive to do the right thing and all of this, but you just did the fucking right thing, Bristol. It’s honestly inspiring to me because I feel like part of what artists do is we’re trying to see- we’re trying to find different ways to be alive and, I don’t know, something like this. I feel you trying to design the future that I want to live in. And you should all be very proud; you’re living your values tonight; I’m living mine. Thank you so much for making that happen for me.”
Maisie Peters by @giugliotto
Barefoot, singer-songwriter Maisie Peters played the East Stage ahead of Lorde’s later headlining performance. During Peters’ set, she presented the live debut of 'Girl’s Just Flying’ from her latest album Florescence; this song resonated with the crowd, featuring themes of reclaiming parts of yourself and moving on. This bank holiday weekend marked the fifth anniversary of Peters’ first album, You Signed Up For This, released in 2021; from this album she played ‘Villain’, a song about accepting loss of control over the narrative in a way that resonates with listeners. Towards the end of her set, she dedicated a cover of ‘Here You Come Again’ to Dolly Parton, stating that “I would not be where I am or who I am today without Dolly Parton,” noting Parton’s influence on her career and love for country music. During her final song, ‘My Regards’, the sun began to sink, glowing a soft pink which intensified in the gap between Peters’ and Djo’s sets.
Djo by @giugliotto
On the other side of Clifton Downs, the West Stage backdrop showed a white screen that, over ten minutes, began announcing Djo as black pixels slowly formed actor Joe Keery’s stage name. Djo primarily plays psychedelic synth-pop crossed with indie rock, and the set reflected this: it began with a strong atmospheric introduction, building tension that eased into his first song. The psychedelic tone was reflected in the visuals, giving aura-like moving colours similar to depictions of the northern lights. The moon began to rise to the right of the stage, slowly ascending throughout the set in a poetic embellishment to the genre. The most notable songs played were ‘Roddy' and ‘Charlie’s Garden’, both eliciting a strong response from the audience, with ‘Roddy’ reflecting on changes within the artist’s personal life and ‘Charlie’s Garden’ a song about finding peace in his friend and co-star Charlie Heaton’s garden during the filming of the final season of Stranger Things and features a spoken cameo from Heaton. The most anticipated song by far was 'End of Beginning’, saved for the final song of his set. The song rose to popularity on TikTok in 2024, being used to create nostalgic videos mirroring the lyric: “When I’m back in Chicago, I feel it / Another version of me / I was in it”, later being used to soundtrack edits by fans of The Bear. The song rose to number eleven on the US Billboard Hot 100 and number four on the UK Singles Chart as a result of the social media popularity. The final chorus was especially hard-hitting, the crowd illuminated with hands stretched towards the sky, screaming the aforementioned lyric. Then, with Lorde’s set scheduled to start fifteen minutes after Djo’s, fans began to run across the site, soundtracked by the outro of Djo’s final song, in a moment reminiscent of an indie coming-of-age film.
Lorde by @giugliotto
Intermittent rain began to drizzle over the charged crowd; the stage fell dark and an instrumental track kicked in. Lorde’s set opened with a shortened version of Grammy Award-winning ‘Royals’, a nod to her rise in fame without allowing it to define her current sound in a way that breathed fresh air into the song released thirteen years ago. The set as a whole was entirely intentional, complete with contemporary choreography performed by Evan Sagadencky and Annalise “Nana” Van Even; this, combined with the experimental camera angles and visuals aiding the performance, created a living art piece. The set pieces were simple yet dynamic, with large boxes used in different ways throughout the set; small immersive elements were added to each song with references to the lyrics and eras. A glass panel was used during ‘Shapeshifter’ in which Lorde pressed her face against the glass with a camera filming from beneath, mirroring the concept of changing oneself, a dynamic projected pattern alike sunlight filtered by the ocean during the song ‘Oceanic’ and sparks flying during ‘Hard Feelings’.
To introduce the powerful ballad ‘Liability', backlit by a curtain of colourful lasers travelling from the stage to the sky, Lorde said: “I’ve been releasing music since I was sixteen and I’m twenty-nine now, Bristol. A lot of different versions of me have been up on a stage in front of people, a lot of versions of me have sung to you through your headphones, I assume, maybe, and I’m sure you feel the same. You’ve been so many people, there are so many versions of you that come out in different times and I just want to encourage you to do what you can to keep your arms around all of them because they’re beautiful, they’re all precious, they’re all kind of awkward and weird and maybe they’ve had bad haircuts, all of it, keep ‘em close, bring ‘em in like you’ve kept me close, like you’ve brought me in.”
During ‘David’, a large piece of white fabric with red text reading: “I DON’T BELONG TO ANYONE” stretched across the crowd, adorned with scribbled messages, notes and signatures from previous performances; this lyric drives the sentiment of the song: a message of empowerment and a declaration of independence. The final song of the night was ‘Ribs’, from Lorde’s debut album Pure Heroine released in 2013. Performed live, ‘Ribs' is a song that creates an incredible atmosphere of friends singing and dancing together. Originally written to explore the fear of growing up and leaving childhood behind, thirteen years later fans celebrate the future in which they have come out the other side of those experiences, overriding the theme of fear of ageing with gratitude for living in that moment.