Harry Styles to curate Meltdown 2026 as Southbank Centre turns 75

Styles’ programme draws on what the Southbank is calling his “broad influences – from pop, soul, electronic and rock to underground scenes and emerging young British talent” – alongside a headline performance from Styles himself. A full lineup is expected in spring.

It’s a curious and interesting appointment. And look – we’ll be honest – there was a time when we’d have filed Harry Styles under guilty pleasure and moved on. That time has passed. Somewhere between the Joni Mitchell deep cuts, the increasingly strange production choices, and an instinct for collaboration that keeps leading him somewhere genuinely unexpected, he became something else entirely: bonafide off-kilter pop royalty, operating at arena scale while somehow remaining allergic to the obvious. Meltdown at its best has always been about an artist using the festival as a kind of extended self-portrait – a chance to map out the obsessions and references that shaped them.

When it works, you get something genuinely revelatory: the late Scott Walker booking Radiohead and Blur in the same week; Nick Cave putting Nina Simone and Barry Humphries on the same bill; Grace Jones turning the whole thing into a joyous, slightly unhinged celebration of herself. The question now is what version of Harry Styles shows up – the arena-filling global pop phenomenon, or the record collector who grew up on Fleetwood Mac and Joni Mitchell and has been quietly making increasingly strange artistic choices ever since. Given recent form, it might well be both.

Styles himself described the opportunity as a chance “to share the music and art that I love, and to celebrate the rich history of the venue,” adding that the Southbank and he “share a passionate belief that music is a vital part of life.” Standard curatorial statement, perhaps – but the proof, as always with Meltdown, will be in the booking.

What we do know is that he’ll have some serious recent history to follow. Last year’s 30th edition, curated by Little Simz, saw her close out the festival with her first ever concert backed by the Chineke! Orchestra, while the programme across eleven days included The Streets, James Blake, Jon Batiste, Ghetts, Nubya Garcia, Lola Young, Mahalia and BADBADNOTGOOD. It was one of the more cohesive and genuinely exciting editions in recent memory — rooted in a specific London lineage but outward-facing enough to feel like a proper cultural moment rather than a nostalgia exercise.

The festival has run annually since 1993, and the roll call of its curators reads like a partial history of everything interesting in music over the past three decades. Whether Styles – at 32, the youngest curator in recent memory – can add a genuinely surprising chapter to that story remains to be seen. But given the Southbank’s 75th anniversary context, and with a new album already out in the world, the conditions are set for something worth paying attention to.

Lineup details to follow. Keep an eye on southbankcentre.co.uk.