The Cure at Way Out West 2026: Timeless Greatness in Their Own Tempo

The Cure are in no hurry.

When Robert Smith and the rest of the band come out on the Flamingo stage, it almost feels as if they've already decided that the evening will take exactly as long as it needs. “Alone” opens the concert with an intro so drawn-out that you start to wonder if the song itself is even going to arrive. Eventually, it does – and then The Cure sound just as grand and self-assured as you'd hoped.

It's a strange contrast to much else at Way Out West. Here there are no attempts to win over the audience in three minutes, no grand gestures, and very little stress. Robert Smith wanders around the stage while the songs do most of the work.

And the audience is with them from the start.

A beach ball bounces around among the people in front of the stage, and during “Pictures of You” a few people try to climb a tree for a better view. That adventure is short-lived. The security guards are quickly there to bring them down again.

“Pictures of You” is also the first real reminder of just how absurdly strong a song catalog The Cure actually possess. That floating guitar, Smith's voice, and a melody that seems able to go on forever without growing tiresome. Here the band's slow tempo fits perfectly.

When “High” comes as the third song, the mood lightens somewhat before “Lovesong” hits even harder. Right at the front, several adults are openly crying. That says a lot about The Cure's peculiar position in 2026. Many of the songs are older than a large portion of the festival audience, but the emotions in them don't seem to have aged a day.

Then comes “Burn”.

Robert Smith brings out a flute, and the result is perhaps not the evening's most elegant moment. It sounds roughly like I do when I forget to take my asthma medicine and try to run for the tram. At the same time, it's hard not to appreciate that one of the world's greatest goth icons stands unashamed on a festival stage and just keeps going.

“Fascination Street” is considerably more convincing. The bass rumbles forward, the stage lights up in a sea of colors, and the concert suddenly finds a darker, more hypnotic drive. It's one of the first clear peaks of the night.

About then, it also starts drizzling over Slottsskogen. Some in the audience immediately decide to leave, which feels like a somewhat rash decision. The rain disappears almost as quickly as it came.

After “A Night Like This”, “Secrets”, and “Push”, the concert begins to move into the part of the set where the hits come more frequently. “In Between Days” is followed by “Just Like Heaven”, and suddenly it’s as if the whole area wakes up again. The latter is still near-perfect pop music: direct, melancholic, and euphoric all at once.

Then comes a noticeably darker sequence.

“Play for Today” leads into “A Forest”, and here The Cure sound at their absolute best. The bass churns forward, the guitars build an almost claustrophobic atmosphere, and the band shows why they can still make a gigantic festival area feel strangely intimate.

It's even stronger in “From the Edge of the Deep Green Sea”. It's the kind of song that doesn’t need to be the most famous to become the night’s big moment. It grows and grows until the whole band sounds as if they're falling apart together on stage – in the best possible way.

“One Hundred Years” continues in the same darkness before the main set ends with “Endsong”. By that point, the concert has been long, at times almost defiantly slow, but also full of moments reminding us why The Cure can still carry a stage this big without needing to do much more than just play.

The encore then becomes something completely different.

“Lullaby” and “The Walk” open before “The Lovecats” gets the crowd bouncing again. When “Friday I’m in Love” comes, there’s not much left of the heavy melancholy from just minutes before. The whole Flamingo transforms into a singalong instead.

It’s almost ridiculous how easily The Cure can switch between darkness and pure pop.

Towards the end also comes “Close to Me”, “Why Can’t I Be You?”, and finally “Boys Don’t Cry”. It’s hard to complain about the song choices, even if the encore at times feels more like an efficient run-through of the biggest crowd favorites than the concert's most focused part.

The best thing about The Cure is also what sometimes becomes their weakness. They sound incredible, but they are so comfortable in their own tempo that some parts almost run on routine. Robert Smith doesn’t need to throw himself around or shout for the audience’s attention. He already knows that songs like “A Forest”, “Pictures of You”, “Just Like Heaven” and “Lovesong” hold up.

And above all, the voice holds up.

It's almost unsettling how little it seems to have changed. When Smith sings, the distance between The Cure then and The Cure now feels surprisingly small. The same sad tone remains over the guitars, as natural today as on the old records.

The Cure thus feels both old and strangely timeless all at once. This isn’t the festival’s most explosive concert and definitely not the fastest.

But during “A Forest”, “From the Edge of the Deep Green Sea”, and “Just Like Heaven”, it doesn’t matter much.

Then The Cure still sound like one of the world’s best bands at making sorrow into something you want to stand and linger in.