Top of the bill, for the second time in four years. Bring Me the Horizon will headline Download 2027, returning to the festival’s highest placement after making their Download headline debut in 2023, with Blink-182 and Evanescence completing a three-act top line at Donington Park.
The headliners were revealed on Thursday 12 November at a launch event at London’s Alexandra Palace Theatre, alongside more than 100 further names, TheMetalList reported. The festival runs from Wednesday 9 to Sunday 13 June 2027 at Donington Park in Leicestershire, according to The Arts Shelf, and tickets are already on sale.
What the Download 2027 Announcement Confirmed
Next year’s event is the 24th edition of Download, branded DLXXIV, Music Week reported. The line-up was unveiled at a launch banquet at Alexandra Palace Theatre that included a launch film and a question-and-answer session with festival director Kam Haq. The Live Nation festival confirmed its three headliners along with more than 100 other acts in this first announcement.
Demand has run ahead of the line-up. Early Bird tickets sold out within two weeks, according to the organisers, and Download is expected to sell out for the fifth year in a row, Music Week said. NME reported that organisers have called it the fastest-selling Download ever. The festival also won Festival of the Year at the Music Week Awards earlier this year.
The three headline placements cover very different parts of the rock audience: a UK metalcore band on its second headline run, a pop-punk band making its first visit to Donington, and an Amy Lee-fronted five-piece stepping up from the second stage.
Bring Me the Horizon’s Second Run at the Top
Bring Me the Horizon will be returning to the top of the line-up after making their Download headline debut in 2023, Louder reported. Four years later, the booking turns that first headline set into a repeat placement at the UK’s largest rock festival, as Louder describes Download.
The catalogue they bring with them has kept moving. The UK metalcore band’s last album was 2024’s Post Human: Nex Gen, according to Louder, and they more recently re-released their 2006 debut, Count Your Blessings, for its 20th anniversary. That reissue came with a new song, Dehumanized, inspired by the raw deathcore sound of the debut.
That spread, from the 2006 debut to the Post Human records, gives the band two decades of catalogue to draw on for a headline set, with the earliest songs freshly back in circulation through the anniversary reissue.
Blink-182 and Evanescence Complete the Top Line
Next year will be Blink-182’s first time headlining Download and their first time playing Donington at all, according to Louder. The pop-punk band reunited with founding singer and guitarist Tom DeLonge in 2022 and released One More Time… the following year, their first album with him on board since 2009. They have since toured extensively and have North American and European festival appearances lined up for the summer.
Evanescence will make their Download headline debut after headlining the festival’s second stage in 2023. The Amy Lee-fronted five-piece will be the second band with a female singer to headline Download, following Linkin Park in 2026, Louder noted, and Music Week described them as the festival’s second female-led headliner.
Their momentum is recent. Evanescence’s latest album, Sanctuary, came out to positive reviews in June and was followed by an arena tour of the UK and Europe in September. Metal Hammer called the band’s O2 Arena show “a triumphant spectacle” in a four-star review, as Louder reported. Their run from second-stage headliner in 2023 to main headliner in 2027 mirrors the four-year gap in Bring Me the Horizon’s own Download story.
Who Else Is on the Download 2027 Bill So Far
The undercard is already deep. Music Week lists Mötley Crüe, Turnstile, The Prodigy, Faith No More, I Prevail, Pierce The Veil, President, 5 Seconds Of Summer, Basement, Soft Play, High Vis, Static-X, Murderdolls, Body Count featuring Ice-T, Malevolence, Converge, Comeback Kid, Terror, The Hives, Dayseeker, Bilmuri, Holding Absence, PVRIS, Hawthorne Heights, Carcass and Napalm Death among the acts confirmed. Louder adds Parkway Drive and notes that Murderdolls return as a reunited band.
NME reported that Mötley Crüe are billed for a very special performance, and that the Faith No More show will be one of the band’s first on this side of the Atlantic since they reformed. TheMetalList’s report also names Kreator and Jinjer among the 100-plus acts. Promoters say many more names are still to be announced, along with some surprises, according to NME.
The mix mirrors the headliners: heavier names such as Carcass, Napalm Death and Converge share the bill with 5 Seconds Of Summer and The Hives. Download organiser Andy Copping has framed the smaller stages as a way to build new acts. “I’ve always wanted to do that, and you can see it in how we’ve been developing the other stages like the Dogtooth stage and the Avalanche,” he told NME in 2024. “For us, it’s about giving bands the opportunity to grow. We’ve got the platform and we want to be sending a message to those guys like ‘Come and play. We believe in you and you’ve got a great opportunity here.’ Thankfully, for the most part, these bands do step up and they do deliver.”
How Download 2027 Compares With the Festival’s History
This year’s festival ran at Donington Park from 10 to 14 June with Limp Bizkit, Guns N’ Roses and Linkin Park as headliners, NME reported, and Linkin Park closed out the Sunday night, according to Music Week. Other names on that 2026 bill included Bad Omens, Cypress Hill, Tom Morello, Trivium, Halestorm, Pendulum, Mastodon, BABYMETAL, Architects and Feeder, while the District X stage featured Five, Electric Six and The All-American Rejects, NME noted. The 2026 edition also had secret sets, TokenGrass, a bluegrass tribute to Sleep Token, and a Rage Against The Machine tribute fronted by a Nicolas Cage impersonator, billed as Nic Cage Against The Machine. Metal Hammer wrote in its recap that, more than two decades since the festival started, “Download’s standing as one of the biggest and most important fixtures in rock remains very much intact”, Louder noted.
That history is long. Download’s first edition took place in 2003, replacing the Monsters Of Rock festival on the same grounds, and has stayed at Donington ever since. The first line-up was headlined by Iron Maiden and Audioslave, the latter replacing Limp Bizkit after the nu metal band dropped out to finish an album; Limp Bizkit finally headlined Download for the first time this summer, 23 years later, Louder reported. Iron Maiden are still on the road too: the band planned a year off, then added 16 more North American shows.
Set against that record, Bring Me the Horizon’s return is a placement milestone for a band that first headlined only four years ago. Where Limp Bizkit waited 23 years to play the headline slot they were first booked for, Bring Me the Horizon have gone from debut headliner to repeat headliner in four years.
Tickets and What Comes Next for Download 2027
PayPal pre-sale tickets for five-day and three-day passes, along with VIP, eco and family packages, are available through the Download website, Louder reported. With Early Bird tickets gone, the remaining passes are the route in for fans planning the five days from Wednesday 9 June to Sunday 13 June 2027.
More announcements will follow before next summer, with more acts and surprises promised. For now, the top of the bill is set: Blink-182 on their first visit to Donington, Evanescence on their first main-stage headline, and Bring Me the Horizon back in the slot they first held in 2023.
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