Mad Cool 2026

Mad Cool has reached double digits, and it does so by now showing all the traits of a mature festival. Having started almost under the radar, partly due to the huge gap in prestige and name recognition compared to Catalonia's Primavera Sound, over the years it has managed to establish itself, learning from past mistakes and gradually building its own identity. That growth has also come through increasingly visible institutional support. Backed by the Community of Madrid and, this year, even blessed by a visit from the Minister of Culture, the festival keeps moving along what we might call a path of “happy degrowth”: fewer tickets sold, more space given over to food and drink areas, and even fewer stages. This year there were only four.
What hasn't shrunk, however, is the line-up, which remains ambitious and packed with big names. The first night, the shortest of the whole edition in terms of length, was dominated by the monumental presence of Foo Fighters. Monumental in charisma, duration, commitment and sheer engagement: a performance able to capture the crowd's attention and inevitably establish itself as the gravitational centre of the day. For over two and a half hours, Dave Grohl ruled the crowd with an overflowing set, with no dead spots and no rationing of energy.

This doesn't mean the other guests were any less impressive, even though many of them had to make do with considerably shorter sets. These were, after all, illustrious names: The War On Drugs, looking perhaps a touch bloated but still formidable musicians, delivered their usual instrumental solidity, with long guitar stretches led by Adam Granduciel. Wolf Alice confirmed their versatility, moving effortlessly between pop, punk and experimental rock, carried by Ellie Rowsell's powerful voice. More theatrical and immediately engaging were The Last Dinner Party, able to turn the stage into a kind of joyful collective ritual, all vocal harmonies, dynamism and a stage presence already surprisingly assured. Jehnny Beth offered the afternoon's most physical, ferocious set instead: despite the stifling heat, she even went crowdsurfing, pairing the usual post-punk tension with a particularly raw rendition of Björk's “Army Of Me”. Moby, penalised by clashing with Foo Fighters, still put on a dynamic, generous show, alternating electronic music, soul and pop with a sizeable band and a set inevitably focused on his biggest classics.

The second day was decidedly busier in terms of both concerts and crowds, reaching a sell-out of roughly fifty-seven thousand attendees. A crowd that inevitably filled the stages for two heavyweights of contemporary mainstream pop, Jennie of BLACKPINK and Zara Larsson. On points, the Korean star probably won, at least for the precision of her choreography, the numerous costume changes and the flawless dance troupe. A show conceived as a true blockbuster, magnetic and visually unimpeachable, even if the heavy reliance on vocal backing tracks occasionally dulled the live feel. Zara Larsson answered with a bolder, more fun-loving pop set, showing remarkable vocal control despite constantly being on the move, though her show suffered from being placed on a secondary stage unable to properly hold such a large crowd.

The best of the night, however, probably happened elsewhere. Lorde put together a gorgeous, aching concert, full of life but shot through with a constant fragility. Even the staging contributed to a deliberately fragmented feel: the musicians gathered inside one quadrant, her often isolated in another part of the stage, and two dancers who sometimes joined her while at other times carried out their own independent movements and actions. The result was a restless, thoroughly contemporary show, in which the different elements seemed to proceed separately before coming back together. Rather than leaning on a monumental set design, Lorde occupied the space with her body, running, contorting, disappearing and reappearing, until she reached a platform in the middle of the crowd for the finale of “Ribs”. The set swung between the sharper edges of her recent material and the collective explosions of “Supercut”, “Team” and “Girl, So Confusing”, striking a rare balance between pop spectacle, personal confession and emotional closeness.
Also worth noting was the irrepressible freshness of CMAT, who took the stage determined to turn country-pop into a collective party, despite the brutal heat. Charlie Puth opted instead for a more classic, polished set, running through his biggest hits in an almost textbook fashion. On the electronic front, Yung Prado offered a solid alternative to the concentration of big names on the other stages, helping keep the programme alive well into the night.

Closing things out was Florence Welch, and more than a concert, hers once again felt like a rite. Dressed in red and surrounded by an imagery that was gothic, floral and almost pagan, she turned the main stage into a huge pop coven, alternating new songs from “Everybody Scream” with the anthems that built her reputation. The high point came with “Dog Days Are Over”, when she asked the crowd to put their phones down and truly take part: a gesture that may by now be a familiar trope, but one followed by a collective explosion that was a reminder of just how imposing a live machine Florence + The Machine still are for their generation.
By the end of the night, the festival's usual mobility problems resurfaced. Despite beefed-up night services on the Metro, Cercanías and buses into the centre, the site's location still meant long walks, queues and a heavily congested transport system. The extra services made the exodus more manageable, but didn't shake the feeling that getting out of Mad Cool remains, even now, the last and least wanted show of the day.

After Thursday's decidedly pop-leaning interlude, the third day brought guitars back to the centre of Mad Cool, bringing together different generations and sensibilities: from the alternative rock of the Pixies to the arena-ready solidity of Kings Of Leon, via the almost ritualistic darkness of A Perfect Circle and the towering spectacle of Twenty One Pilots. A less crowded day than the previous one, but still enough to draw in more than fifty thousand people.
Music, however, had to share the spotlight with an element that was hardly foreseeable when the line-up was being put together: Spain's World Cup quarter-final against Belgium. The decision to broadcast it on the big screens turned the site into a giant fan zone for a few hours, creating a rather surreal atmosphere during the Pixies' set, punctuated by sudden roars from part of the crowd following the match. Black Francis's band, never much for chit-chat or stagecraft concessions, reacted in their own way: reeling off more than twenty songs with stern efficiency, from "Gouge Away" and "Debaser" through to "Where Is My Mind?" and the closing distortion of "Into The White".

Spain's victory unleashed a wave of enthusiasm that spilled straight over into Kings of Leon's set. Nathan Followill came out wearing the national team shirt, earning one of the loudest ovations of the night. The Nashville band, back at the festival after last year's cancellation, delivered their usual solid, tight and technically flawless show. Caleb Followill sang with his unmistakably gravelly voice, though he interacted very little with the crowd: an elegant, substantial set, perhaps overly controlled in its slower passages, but thoroughly gripping once "Use Somebody" and "Sex On Fire" arrived.

One of the musical high points of the day came courtesy of A Perfect Circle. Wrapped in half-light and deliberately set apart from centre stage, Maynard James Keenan led an austere, precise, almost liturgical performance. Songs such as "The Package", "Weak And Powerless", "The Outsider" and "Judith" showed a band in staggering technical form, able to combine heaviness, tension and absolute control of sound. It's a shame that a substantial chunk of the set clashed directly with Kings of Leon: once again the festival forced fans to sacrifice one of the main draws, despite the reduced number of stages.

The closing slot went to Halsey and Twenty One Pilots. The former delivered a set far more rock-oriented than much of her recorded output would suggest. Distortion, rage and theatricality ran through songs like "Nightmare", "Experiment On Me" and "Gasoline", without giving up the more recognisable moments of "Closer" and "Without Me". Tyler Joseph and Josh Dun's band, meanwhile, went all in on strobe effects, confetti and fireworks, with the frontman giving himself generously to the crowd, reaching the VIP area during "Ride" and even roping a security guard into the chorus. The finale of "Trees", with both musicians hoisted above the crowd, confirmed their knack for treating the concert as a form of total entertainment.
At the same time, Interpol offered a diametrically opposed alternative: stillness, monochrome elegance and post-punk precision. Paul Banks and co. put everything into the interplay of guitars and a repertoire that still finds its most intense moments in songs from "Turn On The Bright Lights" and "Antics". "Obstacle 1", "Evil" and "Slow Hands" drew singalongs from a smaller but loyal crowd, offering a more understated ending for those uninterested in the Ohio duo's spectacle. This head-on clash, too, only confirmed the scheduling paradox of this edition: fewer stages, but decidedly too many clashes.

The final day of Mad Cool was also quieter in terms of attendance, but probably one of the most musically coherent. After the contemporary pop and arena rock of the previous nights, the festival chose to close things out by leaning mainly on veteran musicians: Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, Pulp, David Byrne, The Black Crowes and Kasabian.

Opening the day was Jalen Ngonda, whose crystal-clear voice and soul shaped on the sound of the Sixties and Seventies brought a timeless elegance to the site. Later, Matt Berninger built a very different kind of space, intimate yet anything but distant. The singer never let the gap of the stage become a barrier: he sought out the crowd with gestures and jokes, mingling among the crowd. Even without The National behind him, his songwriting retained all its depth, while taking on a more direct, empathetic, almost confiding dimension.

The Black Crowes represented the more traditional, muscular side of the evening. Chris and Rich Robinson served up their blues-tinged rock and southern soul with no particular concessions to modernity, but with the craft and authority of musicians who know their own language inside out. More immediate were Kasabian, led by a Serge Pizzorno fully at ease in his role as frontman: "Club Foot", "Underdog", "L.S.F." and "Fire" turned the show into a string of singalongs and surges of energy, offering one of the most festive moments of the day.

David Byrne, meanwhile, once again proved that he treats a concert as a visual construction first, and only then as a mere sequence of songs. Musicians and dancers, dressed entirely in orange, moved across the stage within an ever-shifting geometric choreography, while his solo material intertwined with Talking Heads classics. When "Psycho Killer" arrived, the crowd instantly recognised it, but Byrne avoided any jukebox effect: the song slotted into the show with the same fluidity as the rest of the set, still nervy, off-kilter and remarkably relevant today.

The emotional core of the night was undoubtedly Nick Cave. In some ways, it was the usual show: the now-ritual opening salvo of "Get Ready For Love", the impeccably elegant dark suit, the running back and forth across the stage, hands stretched out towards the front rows and that almost physical need to seek out the crowd. This time, though, the connection at times felt more automatic than genuinely built, accompanied by repeated cries of "fucking Spain" that betrayed a certain thinness in the interaction.
The setlist, however, held some less predictable choices: few songs from the latest album "Wild God", the absence of a few warhorses, and above all a lengthy "Hollywood", by now a fully-fledged live staple. Backed by the ever-impeccable Bad Seeds, Cave went on turning his songs into a kind of sacred and profane theatre, in which violence, desire, pain and redemption all seem to belong to the same story. The finale, given over to "Into My Arms", brought everything back down to something barer and more intimate. Not his most surprising show, perhaps, but Nick Cave remains a magnificent presence. Intense, dark, able to hold the sacred and the profane together with a stage power that still has no real equal.

The symbolic closing slot went to Pulp, back performing in Madrid almost thirty years after their first time in the Spanish capital. Jarvis Cocker, impeccable and dishevelled, ironic and insinuating: all he needed was to pick up his repertoire of desire, class castoffs and small daily humiliations for everything to click back into instant recognition. "Babies", "Do You Remember The First Time?" and "Disco 2000" laid the groundwork for the inevitable "Common People", sung as a collective anthem by a crowd in which past and present ended up blurring into one another.
With the last note of "Common People", Mad Cool was truly over. The crowd began streaming towards the metro, shuttle buses, taxis and long walks home, as the stages went dark and the site quickly turned back into just a space to pass through. Left behind were abandoned cups, impromptu singalongs, groups of friends trying not to lose each other, and bodies worn out by four days of heat, queues and concerts. The tenth edition closed on a broadly positive note: more mature in its handling of space, still with room for improvement on transport and scheduling, but by now fully aware of its own stature.

Ride the wave of great music

Add OndaRock to your favorite sources on Google Discover. Don't miss our reviews, milestones and latest news straight in your feed.

Follow on Google