Open’er Festival 2026 through five key performances

From David Byrne’s orange-hued optimism to Nick Cave’s rousing, devotional headline set, Open’er Festival transformed north Poland’s Gdynia into a four-day celebration of music legends and contemporary pop icons.

Last weekend, Open’er Festival brought together indie rock heavyweights alongside breakout pop icons beneath the rain, wind and sun of north Poland’s Gdynia-Kosakowo Airfield for four days of music, film, talks, drag shows and more. The port city’s Baltic winds might have felt particularly bracing following the heatwave that’s been gripping most of Europe of late, but even the cooler weather couldn’t ruin the fun. This year, the festival’s line-up was a pop girlie’s dream, with the likes of JADE, Addison Rae, Jennie and PinkPantheress pulling out all the stops. They were joined by some serious music legends, with Nick Cave, David Byrne and The Cure providing sprawling sets replete with timeless hits. Here are five performances we can’t stop thinking about. 

David Byrne

David Byrne’s Who Is The Sky? show feels like watching a multi-limbed orange creature in constant motion. His eclectic 13-piece ensemble of dancers and musicians flowed together, becoming a physical embodiment of the way Byrne’s music unites generations. During a stripped-back rendition of Heaven, he was accompanied by a single violin, cello and synthesiser while the Earth rose slowly on screen behind. The pace began to build as more musicians joined the stage, with various instruments strapped to their bodies via harnesses so as not to impede any movement. A triumph of technicolour optimism and togetherness, it felt more like a theatre performance than your run-of-the-mill festival set. The crowd may have gathered to hear Talking Heads hits like Psycho Killer and Naive Melody (This Must Be The Place), but Byrne’s newer solo material never once slowed the momentum. Occasional pauses in the music gave him a moment to ponder various subjects out loud; the history of political resistance in Poland, whether animals have feelings and why acting with kindness is the most punk thing you can do. The screen flashed with videos of ICE and New York City police clashing with protestors during the delirious, dystopian Life During Wartime while, at the close of Heaven, Byrne looked back at the video of the Earth and said, “There she is. Our heaven. The only one we have.” Journeying through euphoric art rock, deep funk and Afrobeat-inspired grooves, Byrne’s show ultimately made a convincing argument for love, light and laughter as resistance – even just for an hour, beneath the glow of a festival tent, where, as Byrne puts it, “Love and kindness are a form of resistance.” 

JADE

The tent filled with chants of “JADE! JADE! JADE!” before she even stepped out on stage. The former Little Mix member seemed a little perplexed by all the love, given it was her first time performing in Poland. Just a few years ago, she was considering quitting music altogether – an experience she recounts before triumphant closer Angel Of My Dreams – but here she navigated the stage with the personality and bravado of an artist who has fully come into her own. Beneath pink and green flashing lights, she strutted in knee-high boots, flipping her hair or letting it blow dramatically in the wind produced from a small metal fan – the kind we’ve been ineffectually using to cool down our rooms in the heatwave. More rave than pop concert, the track’s propulsive beat set the tone for a breathless set that raced through her debut solo album, collaborative tracks with Confidence Man and Kesha, as well as hits from her former band Little Mix – to the delight of fans crying at the barrier holding a sign reading, ‘Best friends since 2018 thanks to Little Mix.’ There were camp theatrics during Gossip when one of her dancers handed her an old-fashioned telephone into which she said, “Hi it’s Jade, I’m at Open’er Festival…well, if you don’t want people talking about you, you shouldn’t be such a cunt!” At the start of her stirring rendition of Church, she knelt prayer-like on the stage while a stained glass LGBTQ+ flag was cast onto the screen before rushing down into the crowd and returning draped in an LGBTQ+ flag, dedicating the song to her queer fans for “making me the pop girlie I am today.” Closing with the hypnotic Angel Of My Dreams, there is no doubt left that JADE deserves to be up there with the defining pop girlies of the decade.

Supermodel*

In a small stage inside an airplane hangar, rising LA artist and producer Supermodel* walks out to Wonderwall. It’s part of his I used to live in England schtick where he references Tesco meal deals and late nights in Spoons through lethargic, self-aware rap that mirrors LCD Soundsystem’s I’m Losing My Edge. His set is one of the more stripped back of the weekend – just him alone on stage bouncing from side to side as though dancing alone in his bedroom – but it’s just as captivating as the larger productions. The show unfolded like the soundtrack to getting stoned in your parents’ garage, weaving together laidback indie pop, tongue-in-cheek rap, emo angst and funk-driven electronic beats. “I ain’t got no future,” he repeats over a Beastie Boys-style beat, but if his Open’er performance is anything to go by, the future is bright. 

Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds

Nick Cave inspires a passion that verges on fanatical as the crowd reach their hands towards him in devotion. It mirrors the religious themes woven through his two-hour set, with songs from twelve albums mining grief, faith, love and redemption. The set opens with a fierce rendition of Get Ready For Love, a clattering collaboration with his six-piece band and four gospel-style backing singers. A high point comes with his rendition of Little Henry, the song he wrote with PJ Harvey. One of his backing singers comes forward to perform it with him as it starts to rain. Meanwhile, for Joy from 2024’s Wild God, Cave walks out onto the runway, stretching into the crowd to perform a touching acapella close before being swallowed by a deep, growling organ and shimmering percussion. There is a divine coming together of darkness and joy as Cave suavely maneuvers through even the most funereal movements, stretching his arms back out towards the crowd and holding their hands in his. 

Addison Rae 

“This is the most important scream because it’s the last one of the Fame and Glory tour,” Addison Rae cries out to the crowd in the build-up to her famous shriek that punctuates Charli xcx’s Von Dutch remix. But the crowd has already been screaming for 30-minutes by this point, singing every word back while Addison contorts her body into different shapes in a dizzying performance that verges on manic. The tracks are mostly pre-recorded and lip-synced, but the level of athleticism in the performance reveals why this is a necessity – Addison cut her teeth as a TikTok dancer, after all. She bends backwards so far it looks like her spine might snap, while, during New York, she mounts a staircase and dances in a cage with her backup dancers, hanging upside down from the bars before trust falling backwards off the edge into the arms of more dancers. The fun she’s having onstage is infectious and the whole show bottles up the feeling of hedonistic escapism, like a cheeky cigarette at the end of the night.