Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds add Flaming Lips and more to sold-out Brighton homecoming
Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds have revealed an impressive supporting line-up for their sold-out headline show at Preston Park in Brighton on Friday 31 July 2026, with The Flaming Lips, English Teacher, Cate Le Bon and Warmduscher all set to join the bill.
Billed as the band’s only UK show of 2026, the Preston Park date already carried a certain weight. Now it looks even more like a landmark summer event: a hometown-scale celebration for an artist whose ties to Brighton run deep, and a line-up that stretches from psychedelic grandeur to wiry post-punk snap.
Cave himself is clearly feeling the significance of the night. “I am thrilled beyond words to return to my beloved Brighton with The Bad Seeds to play Preston Park. It’s a homecoming! It’s going to be big, bad and beautiful. An epic show!!!”
A support bill with real bite
There is no filler here. The Flaming Lips arrive as the most outsize name on the undercard, bringing with them a long history of turning existential unease into something luminous, strange and emotionally overwhelming. They are a natural fit for a night headlined by a band who have spent decades turning darkness into revelation.
English Teacher, meanwhile, continue to look like one of the most compelling British bands of their generation. Fresh from their rise through the UK guitar underground to major critical acclaim, they add a sharp contemporary edge to the line-up.
Cate Le Bon’s inclusion feels especially well judged. Her off-centre, art-minded songwriting and instinct for sonic left turns make her a fascinating companion to the more exploratory corners of the Bad Seeds catalogue. Warmduscher round things out with a dose of dirt-under-the-fingernails chaos, all twitching rhythms and unruly momentum.
A homecoming with history behind it
Brighton has played a central role in Nick Cave’s life and work for more than 25 years, which gives this one-off show an added sense of occasion. This is not just another festival-style stop on a touring schedule. It is being framed as a genuine homecoming, and the scale of the event suggests a night designed to feel both communal and career-spanning.
The Bad Seeds are expected to draw on all four decades of their catalogue, while also pulling from Wild God, their 2024 album that helped drive one of their most celebrated recent touring runs.
Produced by Cave and Warren Ellis and mixed by David Fridmann, Wild God found the band moving between devotion, disorientation and grandeur with a renewed sense of purpose. In the live setting, that material has reportedly hit with particular force, sitting comfortably beside older songs that have only grown heavier and more resonant with time.
One of the great live bands still in full command
Few bands of their vintage still perform with this level of urgency. Over the past two years, the Wild God tour has only reinforced the Bad Seeds’ standing as one of the most commanding live acts in alternative music. Review after review has painted the same picture: a band still capable of overwhelming a room, and a frontman whose connection to an audience has deepened rather than dimmed.
The current live line-up features Nick Cave, Warren Ellis, Colin Greenwood, Jim Sclavunos, George Vjestica, Larry Mullins and Carly Paradis.
Date
- Friday 31 July 2026 – Preston Park, Brighton – Sold out
