2026.08.30 – Wythenshawe Park, Manchester, England

Date: 30th August 2026
Event: Warrior’s Dance Festival
Venue: Wythenshawe Park
City: Manchester
Country: England
Support: see timetable

Tracklist:
1. Omen
2. Voodoo People
3. Poison
4. The Day Is My Enemy
5. Light Up The Sky
6. Wind It Up
7. Firestarter
8. Invaders Must Die
9. Beyond the Deathray
10. No Good (Start The Dance)
11. Roadblox
12. Get Your Fight On
13. Their Law
14. Smack My Bitch Up
Encore
15. Breathe
16. Take Me To The Hospital
17. Warrior’s Dance
18. Out Of Space
19. Comanche

Extra info:
Timetable:
15:00 doors
15:20 David Rodigan
16:25 Scarlxrd
16:55 Yousuke Yukimatsu
18:00 Andy C
19:10 Carl Cox
21:00 The Prodigy

Review by Luke Storey, www.allmusicmagazine.co.uk:
There was always going to be a point when Manchester’s glorious heatwave finally surrendered. The only question was when. As it turned out, it chose the final day of Live at Wythenshawe Park, and frankly, if you’re going to get caught in a fucking thunderstorm, you could do a lot worse than getting caught in one while The Prodigy are preparing to blow the roof off a park. Sunday 30 August brought the curtain down on two weeks of Live at Wythenshawe Park, and after days of big-name artists, tens of thousands of fans and the usual summer festival rituals, the organisers saved one hell of a final bullet. The Prodigy’s Warriors Dance tour was coming to town, and the weather, apparently, wanted to get involved.
This wasn’t just another festival day either. The line-up was built around electronic music, drum and bass, techno and enough bass-heavy insanity to make the ground itself feel unstable. David Rodigan, SCARLXRD, Yousuke Yukimatsu, Andy C and Carl Cox steadily turned the temperature up before the main event, while the Arcadia stage, the enormous dragonfly structure familiar to anyone who has wandered around Glastonbury, provided a second centre of gravity and kept the music going throughout the day.
There are bands you go and see. Then there are bands you survive. The Prodigy have always belonged firmly in the second category. Since emerging from the rave explosion of the early 1990s, Liam Howlett’s electronic wrecking machine has turned dance music into something physical, confrontational and almost ridiculously exciting in a live environment. With Maxim commanding the front of the stage and Howlett operating from behind the decks, The Prodigy aren’t interested in making you nod along politely. They want your knees in your chest, your ears ringing and your shirt stuck to your back. And after years of seeing them live, I knew exactly what was coming. I still wasn’t fucking prepared.
The day started early with David Rodigan, taking to the stage at 3:20pm and proving that the man can apparently pull a crowd at any hour of the day. Rodigan’s combination of reggae and drum and bass was exactly what was required to get things moving. There is something wonderfully old-school about watching someone who has spent decades immersed in sound-system culture still commanding a festival crowd with such effortless authority. The sun was still doing its best to melt Manchester, but Rodigan had people moving.
Then came SCARLXRD, and suddenly we were operating in a completely different universe. Where Rodigan eased the crowd into the day, SCARLXRD kicked the fucking door down. His collision of metal, trap and rap is tailor-made for a festival audience that has already been drinking in the sun for several hours. The DJ fired up the tracks and SCARLXRD came out swinging, bringing a genuinely ferocious metal energy to a bill otherwise dominated by drum and bass and techno. Mosh-pit mentality in the middle of a dance festival? Absolutely. Why the hell not? The crowd loved it. I certainly did.
Over at the Arcadia stage, the iconic dragonfly structure provided a second centre of gravity for the day. If you’ve been to Glastonbury, you’ll know exactly the sort of ridiculous scale we’re talking about. DJs came and went throughout the afternoon, meaning there was barely a moment when the park wasn’t vibrating with some kind of electronic pulse.
Then came Yousuke Yukimatsu. The Japanese DJ’s set was a beautifully deranged exercise in genre collision, taking influences from seemingly everywhere and somehow making the whole thing sound coherent. Opening with a Skrillex remix was hardly a subtle invitation to the dancefloor, but subtlety wasn’t really what anybody had come here for. It was another perfect piece in the puzzle.
Then things got serious.
Andy C was the support set I had been waiting for, but the heavens had other plans. The thunderstorm arrived just as things were getting serious, and I can confirm that standing in a field with a camera while the heavens open is not generally considered a great career move. Me and my camera got absolutely drenched. Andy C’s set was delayed, but the crowd didn’t give a shit. They waited.
And when he finally arrived, he opened with a drum and bass version of Bring Me The Horizon’s “Can You Feel My Heart”, immediately establishing the tone for what followed. Then came the madness: “In the End,” “Killing in the Name” and “Chop Suey!” Metalheads suddenly had a drum-and-bass soundtrack to their afternoon, and every one of those remixes went down like another shot of petrol on a fire. Andy C and his hype man kept the energy at full throttle throughout. There was no time to stand around contemplating the meaning of life. You moved. You jumped. You sweated. You waited for the next drop.
Then came Carl Cox. Manchester’s own electronic legend was the final support act, and he had nearly two hours to do what Carl Cox does best. Unlike some of his more elaborate setups, tonight felt stripped back, but none of that mattered. The man could probably create a dancefloor with a biscuit tin and a car battery. His blend of techno and house rolled relentlessly across the field, and for almost two hours the crowd simply moved. There was no need for gimmicks. No need for fireworks. Just Cox, the music and thousands of people bouncing around Wythenshawe Park.
By now the anticipation was becoming almost unbearable. The sun had gone. The rain had come. The field was wet. The crowd was soaked. And at around 9pm, the lights went down.
The screen came alive.
The ants appeared.
For one strange second, an enormous crowd went completely still.
Then “Omen.”
Jesus fucking Christ.
Opening with “Omen” is not an opening. It’s a declaration of war. It’s the live-music equivalent of bringing a machine gun to a sword fight. The first notes hit and the entire field exploded. A sea of bodies. Arms everywhere. People jumping. People screaming. The pits opening up. And somewhere behind all of it, Liam Howlett was already pressing the buttons that were about to make several thousand people lose whatever remained of their minds.
Then, as if they hadn’t already made their intentions perfectly clear, they followed it with “Voodoo People.” That melody. That fucking melody. One of the most recognisable sounds in electronic music, and when that bridge hit, the entire crowd became part of the song.
This is where The Prodigy separate themselves from almost everybody else. They’re not merely performing electronic music. They’re turning it into a physical assault. Maxim is the perfect frontman for it. He doesn’t simply sing or MC. He stalks the stage, commands the crowd and looks like he’s about to order an army over the nearest hill.
And behind him, Liam Howlett is the quiet assassin. The mastermind. The man responsible for the sounds that have been rattling skulls for more than three decades. He doesn’t need to stand centre stage. He just needs to press play.
The lights are another weapon entirely. Strobes. Lasers. Blinding bursts of white light. The stage disappears and reappears in fractions of a second, turning the whole performance into some kind of industrial nightmare rendered at 200 frames per second.
Then come the hits: “Poison” and “Light Up the Sky.” And still the crowd keeps going.
Then the lights change.
Everything strips back.
The opening of “Firestarter” arrives, and what follows is one of the most powerful moments of the night. A mysterious figure appears. Lasers shoot from its eyes. Then Keith Flint appears on the screens.
For a band that lost such an enormous part of its identity in 2019, the tribute doesn’t feel forced or sentimental. It feels like Flint is still there, still part of the machine, still screaming those words back at the crowd. A laser projection of him dances across the screen as his voice fills the park.
For a few moments, the madness becomes something else.
A celebration.
A memory.
Then Liam hits the switch.
And we’re off again.
“Invaders Must Die.” One of my personal favourites, and one of those choruses that I simply cannot hear without screaming along at the top of my lungs.
At this point, The Prodigy are tearing through a catalogue so stacked with absolute monsters that choosing a setlist must be like trying to decide which children to save from a burning building. There are simply too many. And somehow, tonight, they do justice to almost all of them.
Then comes “Smack My Bitch Up.”
The crowd gets low.
Lower.
Lower.
And then the drop comes.
BOOM.
Everybody launches upwards.
The final release of energy before the stage goes black.
For a moment, everything stops. Silence. Darkness.
Then Maxim comes back out.
“Do you want more?”
Are you fucking kidding?
The answer comes before the question has even finished.
The opening of “Breathe” kicks in and the stage erupts. Lasers. Strobes. Bodies. Noise. The Prodigy are back in full attack mode.
Then “Take Me to the Hospital.”
Then “Warrior’s Dance.”
By now I’m soaked, exhausted and grinning like an idiot.
And then comes the final weapon.
“Out of Space.”
One last massive communal release. One last mosh pit. One last explosion. The field is jumping. People are screaming. And somewhere above us, the Manchester sky is finally giving up the fight.
The Prodigy have always understood that a live show shouldn’t merely sound good. It should do something to you. It should leave evidence. Sweat. A ringing in your ears. A bruised rib. A voice that doesn’t work properly the next morning. Maybe a camera that will need a fucking industrial dryer.
Tonight they came with reason and violence.
Calling The Prodigy “incredible” doesn’t really do it justice. Incredible is what you say about a nice sunset or a particularly good sandwich. The Prodigy live are something you have to experience. You have to stand in that crowd. You have to feel the bass hit your chest. You have to watch thousands of people lose their collective minds at exactly the same moment.
And after seeing The Prodigy live every year for the past several years, you’d think I’d have learned my lesson.
I haven’t.
And when they’re back in town again?
I’ll fucking be there.

Review by Samuel Chamberlain, www.mancunion.com:
On a normal Sunday in Wythenshawe Park, south Manchester, dog-walkers and families can be spotted sprawled across 270 acres of woodland and greenery. August’s bank holiday Sunday, however, saw the usual wholesomeness of the weekend swapped for the pandemonium of The Prodigy, and their strain of hell-raising electro-punk. The legendary group brought their Warrior’s Dance show back to Manchester following previous appearances at The Warehouse Project and Co-Op Live, levelling up to a capacity of 30,000 and bringing an all-star lineup of their peers with them.
Opening the show was David Rodigan, the 75-year-old radio DJ known for spinning reggae and dancehall. His set at Wythenshawe Park was tailored more towards The Prodigy’s crowd, being filled with jungle and breakbeat. Tributes to the group abounded amongst his selections, such as Max Romeo’s ‘Chase the Devil’ which serves as one of seven songs sampled in The Prodigy’s ‘Out of Space’. A quick trip to the second stage, designed by the team behind Glastonbury’s Arcadia, saw DJs such as Egg on Toast, Pablogyal, Vxrgo and Lucidik deliver sets enveloped in a bug-shaped structure.
Despite being relatively low on the lineup, Scarlxrd’s popularity and reptuation for hard-hitting rap metal shows were entirely justified by his 25-minute set on Wythenshawe Park’s main stage. The crowd might have been small due to his early performance slot, but they erupted the moment he arrived onstage. Circle pits opened, prompting the West Midlands artist to declare “Manchester is fucking mental” while his DJ added “it’s a fucking honour to be here”.
After a disappointing debut set at The Warehouse Project last autumn, ¥ØU$UK€ ¥UK1MAT$U had plenty to compensate for. Expectations were high, but the DJ prevailed, avoiding the slower electronica that hampered his previous Manchester appearance. As soon as Yukimatsu left the stage, torrential rain took the place of the bass sounds that had previously been pelted at the crowd. The sight of thousands of people rushing to throw on ponchos and find covered areas was something to behold, and the weather’s ferocity persisted throughout Andy C’s drum and bass set. After the downpour had finished, at least momentarily, legendary DJ Carl Cox took to the decks. Summery house might have been washed away by the weather, but Cox’s jungle and breakbeat selections invigorated the Wythenshawe Park audience, preparing them for the headliner.
‘Omen’ was the song chosen to open The Prodigy’s set: its menacing bass and intense percussion were appropriately greeted by a sold-out crowd bouncing, jostling and dancing frenetically. “Do you see any rain?”, now-frontman Maxim asked before the group launched into ‘Voodoo People’, referencing its momentary pause and proclaiming “we are the fucking rain”. ‘Poison’ and ‘The Day is My Enemy’ increased the levels of distortion blasting through the main stage’s sound system, while ‘Wind It Up’ appeared as a deep cut that the group’s hardcore fans clearly appreciated.
The Prodigy have so many hits amongst their catalogue that it would be impossible for them to close the show with every one, so ‘Firestarter’ was selected for an early performance. Anarchic anthems ‘Roadblox’, ‘Get Your Fight On’ and ‘Their Law’ ushered in the end of The Prodigy’s main set, before ‘Smack My Bitch Up’ closed it with another hit of chaos. ‘Breathe’ and ‘Take Me to the Hospital’ opened their encore, and the crowd’s frenzied response was sustained into ‘Warrior’s Dance’, the track that provided the group’s tour with its name. “This is the fourth one of the year, many more will come”, Maxim declared, prompting the loudest cheers of the night. ‘Out of Space’, as always, was the final song, and the group left to the sounds of Invaders Must Die b-side ‘The Big Gundown’, known to fans as ‘Comanche’ due to Maxim’s chants during its previous live performances.
Wythenshawe Park hosts a statue of Oliver Cromwell, the famously puritan parliamentarian known for winning the English Civil Wars and establishing frequently parodied, restrictive moral codes in the seventeenth century. In the Restoration period, his body was dug up, hung and beheaded: if that wasn’t enough to make him restless in his stone form, then The Prodigy certainly was. There are rumours that the group were so anxious about their first ever performance that they arrived eleven hours early, but there were no signs of those nerves at the final stop of their Warrior’s Dance run. Whether they’re in a warehouse, an arena or a field in Manchester, The Prodigy know how to cause chaos in the best way possible.

Review by Megan FitzGerald, www.clashmusic.com:
“Four nights of pure ruckus.”
It’s an intriguing offer, and that’s exactly what The Prodigy promised for their Warrior’s Dance Festival tour this year. Four day-long celebrations across four cities (Dublin, Milton Keynes, Edinburgh and Manchester), each hosting an array of musical talent – curated by the electronica giants themselves – to join them in melting the faces off of punters. First held in Tokyo in 2009, the Warrior’s Dance festival was a chance for The Prodigy to throw the biggest party imaginable, with the likes of Pendulum, Chase & Status, Skrillex and scores more performing in the years following – but it hasn’t been put on since 2013.
When it was announced that the festival was returning after thirteen years, tickets disappeared. Electronic and dance music is experiencing a peak in popularity right now, but The Prodigy have been ahead of the game since the 1990s. Even without having released an album since 2018 (‘No Tourists’), their position and influence on today’s music culture is immeasurable. Their anti-authoritarian themes and raging, addictive beats have stirred something in listeners of all ages for decades.
Manchester served as the final stop of the 2026 Warrior’s Dance run, held at Wythenshawe Park over the August bank holiday. This time The Prodigy brought five “kings of their game”: David Rodigan, Scarlxrd, Yousuke Yukimatsu, Andy C and Carl Cox. It was a send-off to the summer in true Mancunian style: loud and soaking wet.
Ska and reggae legend David Rodigan kicked things off with some old-school bangers, before Scarlxrd brought a tone switch so intense it genuinely seemed to catch the crowd off-guard, rushing onstage to a riotous shrieking set of trap metal. The bewilderment soon faded though, and before long mosh pits were swirling – it was unexpectedly one of the most invigorating performances of the evening. Yousuke Yukimatsu, the Japanese DJ who was propelled to worldwide infamy following his viral 2025 Tokyo Boiler Room set last year, performed in his typically disarming style. It was as soon as his last song (Joy Division’s ‘Love Will Tear Us Apart’) finished however that, rather poetically, the heavens opened and the report of a nearby electrical storm brought the Warrior’s Dance to a temporary standstill.
A bit of rain has never hampered a Mancunian crowd. After a brief huddle beneath raincoats, the party began again as Andy C blasted his identifiable blend of heavy metal and drum-and-bass to a swarm of people who immediately sprinted from their shelters. House and techno legend Carl Cox was the final support act, rejoining The Prodigy after supporting them on their earlier spring UK and Ireland tour this year. It was a stellar – albeit male-dominated – lineup and the hours preceding headliner’s arrival were nothing short of fantastic.
So then, it was time for The Prodigy. The tension in the crowd was truly palpable as the space transformed to mark their arrival: during the whole festival, large objects onstage had been conspicuously covered by large black tarps, a tattered banner hung from the rafters and a tall dark effigy loomed silently from within the crowd. It was ominous, dramatic and clearly effective: the crowd was roaring in anticipation before the band even took to the stage. When MC Maxim and founding member Liam Howlett eventually appeared to rolling bass and synths, the reception was enormous; then chaos began.
In true Prodigy style, they didn’t give the crowd a single second of respite before pelting them immediately with smash-hit ‘Omen’. Maxim was a domineering figure, clad in dark floating attire and streaked white face-paint, leaping across the stage and into the crowd. ‘Voodoo People’ and ‘Poison’ came next, with the crowd lurching as strobe lights detonated. The tarp-covered objects were revealed to be giant laser-guns (very Prodigy-esque) which sent sizzling lights across the space. Howlett thrashed from his position further backstage. It was intense, dystopian and absolutely what the people wanted. I have never seen people dance harder.
Although with seven UK Number One albums under their belt, it was ‘Invaders Must Die’, ‘Music for the Jilted Generation’ and ‘The Day is My Enemy’ that provided the majority of the night’s setlist. Worldwide classic Firestarter was, unsurprisingly, met with one of the biggest receptions of the evening. The crowd went wild for late member Keith Flint as his voice reverberated across the park and it was in this moment that the effigy came to life, blasting green strobes from its eyes to sear an outline of Flint’s legendary outline onto the stage wall. It was a poignant moment and a nod to a missing legend.
The energy never wavered. ‘No Good’ was to follow which sent people into a frenzy, as did ‘Smack My Bitch Up’, which had Maxim commanding people to “GET DOWN!” before leaping up for the song’s climax. The stage cleared as they disappeared briefly before returning for an encore, which saw them run through a gauntlet of some of their biggest hits: Maxim snarled to ‘Breathe’, the beats crashed in ‘Warriors Dance’ and the otherworldly ‘Out of Space’ saw the strongest light-show of the night. “Liam wants to do one more!” Maxim announced to raucous cheers, before treating the audience to a finale rendition of the hypnotic ‘Comanche (The Big Gundown)’.
It was a sublime end for the return of the famed festival. This Warrior’s Dance proved that where The Prodigy goes, people follow, even after all this time. Next up, they’re performing on the North American festival circuit before embarking on a European tour over November.
Fingers crossed, the Warrior’s Dance festival is back again to stay. Here’s to the next one.

Poster: