LIDO FESTIVAL 2026: MARIBOU STATE

Maribou State closed LIDO Festival 2026 with the kind of set that made a temporary goodbye feel less like an ending and more like a promise.

As the sun dropped over Victoria Park on Monday, Chris Davids and Liam Ivory took to the stage to headline the final night of LIDO’s 2026 run, bringing their widescreen blend of electronics, live instrumentation and deep, rolling grooves to a crowd that was more than ready to lose itself in it.

They opened with the slow-build atmosphere of ‘Peace Talk’, taking their time before properly opening the taps. From there, the set moved confidently through the Maribou State catalogue, with ‘Nervous Tics’ — still one of the defining tracks from 2018’s Kingdoms in Colour — landing particularly hard.

‘Otherside’, ‘Beginner’s Luck’, ‘Glasshouses’ and ‘All I Need’ kept the momentum moving, while featured vocalist Talulah Ruby marked the occasion as something closer to home.

“Thank you very much,” she told the crowd. “I used to live by this park — this is a dream come true for me.”

There were plenty of big moments. A drum solo during ‘Dance on the World’ pushed the set into overdrive before ‘Rituals’ and ‘The Clown’ brought the heavier rhythms and low-end pressure.

Then came the moment everyone had been waiting for.

Before ‘Midas’, Davids reflected on the pair’s journey — from making music in a shed at Ivory’s parents’ house more than 15 years ago to standing on a festival headline stage in Victoria Park.

“This is the last show for a little while,” he said, before making one thing very clear: “It’s most definitely not the end.”

And that was that. Not a farewell, exactly. More of a full stop before the next chapter.

Earlier, Kelis brought a completely different kind of energy to the main stage. Her catalogue remains ridiculously stacked, and the crowd responded accordingly, with ‘Caught Out There’, ‘Milkshake’, ‘Trick Me’ and ‘Millionaire’ all serving as reminders that she has more genuine pop classics than most artists could dream of. She also threw in flashes of Nirvana’s ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ and Donna Summer’s ‘I Feel Love’ — because why not?

Folamour followed with a set built for exactly this kind of festival afternoon-into-evening blur, pulling together disco, funk, soul and house into one huge, loose-limbed party.

Elsewhere, Lady Wray delivered powerhouse modern soul, while Alabaster DePlume opened the main stage with saxophone, warmth and his own wonderfully off-centre sense of occasion.

The rest of the site was just as busy. Theo Parrish and Moodymann went back-to-back on the second stage, with Calibre, Marie Davidson and MADMADMAD also on the bill, while LTJ Bukem brought heavyweight drum and bass history to the Third Stage. Kelly Lee Owens, meanwhile, kept a packed crowd locked in.

LIDO Festival has only been around since 2025, but this felt like the kind of day that gives a young festival its own identity: big names, properly curated bills and enough variety to make wandering away from the main stage feel worthwhile.

For Maribou State, though, the final word belonged to the band themselves.

They’ll be back.