The Cure and Amyl & The Sniffers lead first names for Øya Festival 2026

The Cure and Amyl & The Sniffers have been announced as the first names for the 2026 edition of Øya Festival.

The Norwegian festival will be returning to the Tøyen Park again next year between Wednesday August 12 and Saturday August 15.

Today (Wednesday October 1), the first announcement about the 2026 line-up has been shared, and it has been revealed that The Cure will be among the headliners for next summer.

Robert Smith and co. will take to the stage to close out the first day of the upcoming event, and it will be their only Norwegian show of the year. It also marks their first time back at Øya in seven years.

Joining them on the line-up is explosive Australian punk-rockers Amyl & The Sniffers, who will act as main support for the British band on the night. Their appearance at the festival follows them releasing their latest album, ‘Cartoon Darkness’, last year, and tearing up festival stages this summer with slots at Glastonbury, Reading & Leeds, and more.

“Super excited with this first announcement, as The Cure has been one of my favourite bands since I was a teenager, and they keep on delivering mesmerising shows. Amyl and her band will also be a blast,” said Claes Olsen, founder of Øya Festival.

Tickets for Øya Festival 2026 are on sale now here, and more names for the upcoming instalment are set to be announced soon. Check out the announcement post here:

Første slipp til #øya2026 pic.twitter.com/GsjrjKWffo

— Øyafestivalen (@oyafestival) October 1, 2025

This isn’t the first festival appearance that The Cure have planned for 2026. Last month, they steadily announced plans to headline at Rock En Seine, Primavera Sound, and Isle Of Wight Festival.

Last night (Tuesday September 30), the band also shared details of new UK and Ireland headline shows taking place next summer. This included four live dates, with stops in Dublin, Belfast, Manchester and Edinburgh throughout June and August.

The new dates will be The Cure’s first time on stage together since their show at London’s Troxy last November. That gig was in front of just 3,000 fans – including Green Day‘s Billie Joe Armstrong, Radiohead‘s Ed O’Brien, Boy George, Mogwai‘s Stuart Braithwaite, and Pedro Pascal in the crowd – and came in celebration of their latest album, ‘Songs Of A Lost World’.

Smith also hinted previously that new shows being announced will symbolise that a new album has been completed and should be ready for release.

Last year, around the time of their latest album, ‘Songs Of A Lost World’, being released, he said that the band have another LP that’s “virtually finished”, as well as a third new record also on the way.

He said that he was reluctant to book any tour dates until at least one of those was fully done. So with new live shows being steadily announced, it could indicate that a new record is coming in the new year.

On top of that, the frontman also added that he can imagine the celebrations continuing all the way up until the band hit their 50th anniversary.

At The Cure’s last appearance at Øya, NME praised the set in its five-star review of the whole festival. 

“If you’ve seen The Cure as many times as we have this summer, you may start to wonder how one marathon set of indie-goth classics could possibly feel any different to another,” it read. “While their Glastonbury appearance had its inherent sense of occasion, their headline at Øya 2019 somehow felt no less momentous and arguably more fun. As the summer wears on, it seems Robert Smith and co are getting far more free, loose and just plain daft.”

This August was the 26th edition of the festival, with headline sets from Chappell Roan, Charli XCX, Queens Of The Stone Age –who made a glorious return after being forced to pull out last year – and Girl In Red.

Around that same time, festival boss Claes Olsen spoke to NME about putting on one of Europe’s most acclaimed and progressive festivals at a time of challenging world politics.

Øya insisted that none of the revenue it receives is being used in “activities that contribute to maintaining Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestine”, and instead ploughed ahead to platform the issue. The likes of vocal Israel critics Kneecap, Fontaines D.C. and Mary Wallopers were among a raft of names using their time on stage to speak out.

“We feel like a music festival like us should be the perfect platform to have artists and ourselves express values and opinions about a lot of topics – especially on Palestine. We’ve seen a lot of artists do it, and we’ve put a lot of effort into taking a clear stance. That’s important,” said Olsen.

“We’ve got a stand on Palestine and we printed thousands and thousands of bracelets to be sold for good causes in Gaza. There’s a mixture of people behind it. […] To stand together and help the people in Gaza is so much more important than anything else at the moment.”

Check out that full interview here.