By Sally Churchward. Main image: Kasabian by Elliot McRae.
More than 150,000 people headed to Southsea Common for Victorious Festival this weekend (28-30/8/26).
And those 150,000 will have had as wide a range of experiences as the weather – which covered almost all bases, including blazing sunshine, strong wind, downpours and some lightning – at the eclectic festival, which caters for a broad range of tastes, not only in terms of music but also in the entire festival experience that people choose to have.
For many, of course, it’s all about the big bands – the headliners were Richard Ashcroft, The Black Keys and Kasabian on the main (Common) stage and Faithless, Bastille and Basement Jaxx on the second (Castle) stage and all were huge draws.
But for others it’s about different things. Victorious has a reputation that it works hard to maintain of being a family festival. This isn’t lip-service – there is an entire family area, with its own stalls, the awesome retro gaming tent, a stage where you could catch the likes of Supertato, rock climbing and much more.
The festival is also strong on spoken word – I ran into a friend who was there for the poetry, and catching some music while she was at it. Another friend was there for the communal experiences – the joyful daily mass sing-alongs at the fantastic Massaoke, which saw thousands of people experiencing the sheer delight of simultaneously singing along to the likes of Abba, Whitney Houston and House of Pain played and sung by a live band – the yoga and the drumming.
For others, the food is a key part of the event. There is a lot of very good food to choose from – this isn’t somewhere where catering is an after thought, something to keep you going between mosh pits.
And of course there are all the stalls, where you can pick up vintage clothing, browse novelty hats and much more in between, alongside a skatepark and more.
And then there’s the music.
There’s a lot of variety between the two main stages but also there are some big acts to be caught at some of the smaller stages – Goldie Looking Chain, Kyle Falconer and The Ordinary Boys were at the significantly smaller Under the Trees stage. And it’s not all about the big names. The World Music Village is like a mini festival within a festival – with a fantastic array of music from across the globe. It’s easy to wander into the back to see what’s going on and soon find yourself at the front throwing yourself into the dancing.
Whatever your main reason for being at the festival, it’s definitely worthwhile taking some time out to check out what else is on offer and to broaden your horizons – especially as it’s so easy to do there.
Friday at Victorious used to be something of a soft opening, but those days were long forgotten this year with afternoon special guest Rudimental getting the party started early on the main stage, playing bangers to a big crowd and setting the tone for the 3 day event – a massive party where the best thing you can do is throw yourself completely into it.
Richard Ashcroft was the Friday night headliner and there was more in that vein of guitar rock in the afternoon with The Coral and Cast amongst those drawing large crowds at the main stage.
Ashcroft himself played a solid but somewhat dull set, especially compared to many of the other bands who strived to be entertaining and to win over their audience, knowing that many of them may only know a song or two. His set would no doubt have delighted fans but it felt like a gig that you could catch at your local venue rather than having the generosity of performance and sense of delight in being there that oozed from others, particularly the Scissor Sisters, who had taken the main stage before him, along with the likes of Kasabian, Bastille, Nile Rodgers & Chic and even afternoon performers such as Lottery Winners and Sleeper.
For me, Scissor Sisters were the definite high point of Friday. We had the perfect warm-up to their crazy, camp show a couple of hours earlier with The Venga Boys bringing the party to an absolutely packed Castle Stage crowd. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a bigger crowd at the Castle Stage for an afternoon performance. It was fun, friendly and lots of fun, with the crowd dancing along to the band’s hits and covers, with huge smiles on the faces of the audience as far as the eye could see.
Scissor Sisters absolutely brought the party to the main stage on Friday night, with a larger than life show, which had the feeling of being a concert rolled into The Rocky Horror show with a touch of Return to the Forbidden Planet.
It could almost have been described as family friendly – the crowd was warm and welcoming, the band was inclusive, the music is well-known and accessible – if it wasn’t a little X-rated at times – there was quite a lot of breast on stage, including a giant inflatable pair, a fair bit of grinding and some risque outfits, but that’s what you should expect from a band including the ‘hostess with the most-titties’.
It was so much fun, but also so much more. For all the costume changes/costume removal, props, giant alien blob backing dancers and more, Scissor Sisters have a fantastic range of songs which sounded amazing live. Frontman Jake Shears told us we were all Scissor Sisters, and on Friday night, we were.
Bastille were one of the big draws for Saturday, but there was tension for Stormers – their fans – in the week as to whether the gig would be able to go ahead. Lead singer Dan Smith had been put on 5 days vocal rest and the band had had to cancel a festival appearance on Wednesday. With sets to play on Friday, Saturday and Sunday, would Victorious be a casualty of doctor’s orders?
In the end the band were just delayed by around 15 minutes due to technical issues, an issue also faced by Saturday bands Doves and The Covasettes.
But all the tension and delay was worth it, even if the set had to be cut a little short due to the delay and curfew. Dan’s voice showed no signs of having been struggling as he tore his way through a set that was full of crowd pleasers, including Good Grief, Things We Lost in the Fire, a moving tribute to Dolly Parton, Happier and Pompeii. It also featured a DJ mash-up section drawn from the band’s Other People’s Heartache era, as featured in last year’s tour.
The band also played a couple of new songs – Save My Soul which was introduced on last year’s tour, for which Dan got the crowd to sing along for the chorus, and the as yet unrecorded In the Light of the Morning which, despite Dan’s apology for introducing a new song, had the whole crowd dancing like it was a favourite hit.
Dan went on a trademark wander through the crowd and leapt round the stage with energy that belied a summer of festival dates.
Earlier in the day, on the same stage, Kate Nash also took off into the crowd to perform two songs from within the audience, much to the delight of those near the front.
Kate makes the most of her platform to speak out about important issues. Of mixed British and Irish heritage, she has been researching her Irish side more, and has rerecorded and added to Sinead O’Connor’s 1994 song, Famine, which explains the history of the so-called potato famine, which was, in fact, not a true famine but was caused by the English removing food from Ireland under armed guard.
If you didn’t know this before her set at Victorious you would after, as she explained the background to the song in an impassioned chat to the crowd.
She also spoke out against transphobia before performing her song on the same theme GERM, renaming so called TERFs as ‘exclusionary, regressive, misogynist,’ while the song also details statistics on sexual assaults on women by CIS men and attacks on the trans community.
It was a moving, energising and passionate performance, as well as a joyful one, also including hits Mouthwash and ending, of course, with a huge singalong to Foundations.
A mid-afternoon treat on the main stage on Saturday was Lottery Winners followed by White Lies. Both bands delivered solid, crowd pleasing sets, that win over a crowd from being curious to fans over the course of 40 minutes or so on stage.
The other big highlight of Saturday was Nile Rodgers & Chic, absolutely bringing the party to the main stage. Everyone was dancing from the front of the crowd, through the premium covered area and all the way to the very back of the crowd. There were smiles as people chatted with strangers and danced to Nile’s endless array of hits, including songs made famous by Diana Ross, Daft Punk, Madonna, David Bowie and many more. It was a perfect festival set, full of crowd pleasers, executed perfectly by the talented band.
Sunday threatened more rain than it eventually delivered, much to the relief of festival goers swaddling their festival outfits in single use ponchos, which weren’t really able to stand up to the downpour when it did eventually hit heavily during The Streets’ main stage performance, second to the top of the bill.
He pressed on valiantly despite the odd flash of distant lightning.
The Streets is one of those love them or hate them acts, lacking the universal appeal of the likes of Nile Rodgers & Chic but that’s one of the great things about a festival like Victorious – whilst people could be seen running towards the main stage at the sound of the opening bars of You’re Fit But Don’t You Know It, others who aren’t fans of Mike Skinner’s brand of spoken word set to music had plenty of other options to head for.
Victorious tends to combine a dose of nostalgia alongside newer music.
Sunday afternoon at the Castle Stage offered a bit of both in the form of Sleeper. Fronted by the smilingly charismatic Loiuse Wener, the band had their heyday back in the nineties Britpop explosion and after a break of a couple of decades reformed in 2017 to join the bill for a Britpop tour before going on to record a new album, The Modern Age, released in 2019 and have been touring since, as well as hinting at recording new music.
Down on the barrier at the front of their gig was a perfect cross section of festival goers, and a vignette of what makes festivals like Victorious so magical. I was flanked by self-declared superfans on one side, who Louise recognised and gave a wave to – much to their screaming “we love you Louise” delight – and on the other side by some teenagers, who were new to the band. Both groups managed to acquire a set list via the security staff – and it was a great set, featuring crowd-pleasing hits such as Inbetweener, Sale of the Century and Delicious – one of the songs that saw Louise unfairly branded as writing about sex all the time, and therefore continuously asked about it in interviews, unlike her male contemporaries who journalists were happy to accept as more rounded characters – which she dedicated to the women in the audience.
Sunday headliners – and festival closers – were Kasabian, who last headlined here in 2023.
Three days into a festival that had seen festival-goers get battered by the weather and exhaust themselves yomping from stage to stage at the (thankfully) fairly compact site, and then dancing their shoes off to everything from samba drums to pop hits, it would be understandable in the energy was dropping for the final hour or two of Victorious.
Not on Kasabian’s watch.
After a dramatic countdown, the band burst onto stage launching immediately into one of their most recognisable hits, Club Foot which has ten times the power live that it ever has as a recording.
Frontman Serge Pizzorno was full of energy and was determined to keep the crowd hyped up, demanding dance moves such as a hand push for newish song Superpowers because “it looks proper mint,” hands in the air for Hippie Sunshine, as well as climbing on shoulders and a lot of jumping. All the while he was running around the stage, and heading up and down a walkway through the crowd to a small satellite stage that placed him in the middle of the audience.
“Just being in a field with your mates… this is where it’s at, we’re living it right now,” he told the crowd, and he was right. The festival was full of moments where all that mattered right then was being there and singing along.
The band seemed delighted to be there, sharing the experience with the huge crowd. It was the perfect way to end another fantastic Victorious Festival, wringing the maximum fun and energy out of the weekend, and leaving festival goers making their way home happy, exhausted, satisfied and counting down until they could do it all again next year.
- In Common is not for profit. We rely on donations from readers to keep the site running. Could you help to support us for as little as 25p a week? Please help us to carry on offering independent grass roots media. Visit: https://www.patreon.com/incommonsoton