With Slam Dunk celebrating its 20th anniversary in 2026, K! takes a trip down memory lane – from the festival’s surprising, humble beginnings, to becoming a UK go-to every single year…
Two decades since starting out as a one-stage all-dayer in the heart of Leeds, Slam Dunk has expanded and evolved into a pivotal festival fixture for the alternative scene. As preparations ramp up for bumper 20th anniversary celebrations at Hatfield Park and Temple Newsam this May, we look back through two decades of frenzied mosh-pits and heartfelt sing-alongs at 20 moments that have defined UK rock’s biggest independent get-together…
Slam Dunk might have grown out of the club night at Leeds’ (now-defunct) 500-cap Cockpit, but its first shot at the hoop was anything but an intimate affair. Packing 7,000 fans into the massive Millennium Square, it was basically a Fall Out Boy show that went out of control. “It really was a mad moment,” says organiser Ben Ray. “Fall Out Boy had just exploded. We’d put them in the biggest indoor venue Leeds had in the January, and it sold out. Their agent called to say they were coming back that May, but there simply wasn’t a venue in Leeds big enough. I knew we had an outdoor space big enough, but then that felt too big – unless we put on some more artists to go with them. So I said, ‘Give me the bank holiday Saturday, and we’ll make it work.’ We didn’t even set out to create a ‘festival’ that year. It was meant to be a massive Fall Out Boy show, and suddenly it became the foundation of what Slam Dunk Festival is now.”
It’s wild to think that Paramore weren’t even headlining Slam Dunk when they dropped by for what’s still their only appearance in 2007. Even playing second-fiddle to Huntington Beach ska-punk legends Reel Big Fish (who, in fairness, ruled) there was lightning-in-a-bottle excitement seeing the pop-punk favourites storming through a set culled entirely from 2005 debut All We Know Is Falling and 2007 breakthrough Riot!. Their superstar status was yet to be confirmed, but the Leeds crowd already knew they were witnessing greatness.
With Download scaling things back as it rethought its site in 2008, Slam Dunk picked up the slack, expanding to a full four stages around Leeds University. New York emo heroes Cute Is What We Aim For were the main stage headliner, but it was the scattering of rising heroes across the bill – from Fightstar and Twin Atlantic to The Blackout and Zebrahead – that benchmarked the buffet of brilliance that the festival was fast becoming.
Having snatched victory from the jaws of defeat on their first visit in 2007, then stepping up mightily in 2008, You Me At Six delivered their first major festival headline performance with their third Slam Dunk set on the trot. Unrecognisably tighter, more confident and bigger-sounding than they were just two years earlier, getting to prove themselves to thousands of adoring fans springboarded their arena-seeking self-belief. “We were always so happy that Slam Dunk could be so instrumental in the rise of one of the UK’s top artists,” enthuses Ben Ray. “When we first booked them, there really weren’t many UK bands like them coming through. There were all these massive U.S. pop-punk bands, and not as many homegrown artists, so they were special. To be able to support them right from the earliest days and help give them a platform was an honour.”
Firmly established as a Northern powerhouse, the decision to duplicate things 170 miles down the M1 at Hatfield’s University Of Hertfordshire could’ve been a bridge too far. As fans turned out in droves, it became a pivotal moment in creating the juggernaut we love today. A stacked line-up boasting both Floridian pop-punks New Found Glory and Illinois ghouls Alkaline Trio ensured there was something for every shade of punk.
During its early years, there was arguably nowhere better in the world to make a deposit in the skank bank than down at Slam Dunk. 2011 was peak two-tone checkerboard silliness with Reel Big Fish and Less Than Jake co-headlining the main Jägermeister Stage, with the likes of The Starting Line, Goldfinger and The Skints packing the undercard. Sure, there were heavier and more fashionable sounds on offer elsewhere, but no songs more fun (or fitting) than All My Best Friends Are Metalheads. Pick it up! Pick it up! Pick it up!
Slam Dunk’s gnarlier side had truly begun to take shape by 2012, and there was no better band to lose teeth to than Buffalo bruisers Every Time I Die. They levelled both sites, obviously, but it was in Leeds’ sweatbox Honour Over Glory Stage that shit really kicked off. Sandwiched between a never-better Cancer Bats and the mighty Architects, they explosively proved why they were one of modern heavy music’s greatest bands with a set that left many wondering how the hell it’s possible to get that good. You’ve got to bet that a lot of bands were formed that day…
Never happy to be knowingly upstaged, the Canadian psychos stole their thunder back from Every Time I Die when they returned the following year, with a pair of raucous Tiger Stage headline sets. At the peak of their powers, a setlist pinballing from Sorceress and R.A.T.S. to Lucifer’s Rocking Chair and Pneumonia Hawk saw moshers unleash hell and leave venue foundations creaking under sheer chaos.
Yes, sure, with Kids In Glass Houses’ 2022 return, the Cardiff rockers’ break-up feels a lot less wrenching. But that can’t dilute the emotions fans swam through in the moment as Aled Phillips and the boys – true Slam Dunk favourites – signed off back in 2014. Between the unabashedly nostalgic run-through of debut album Smart Casual to a climactic Matters At All, there wasn’t a dry eye on site.
Trash Boat are unassailably cool rock stars these days. Back in 2015, though, with the St Albans collective having just gotten together (it was another 13 months before they’d release their debut LP) Tobi Duncan and co. were still struggling to make their mark. Beating out a host of other red-hot newcomers in the Kerrang!-sponsored Fresh Blood contest for their opening spot on the bill, then levelling the place, they galvanised the brash attitude and indomitable self-belief that would fuel their inevitable rise. What a way to start.
We didn’t know it at the time, but Architects guitarist and chief songwriter Tom Searle had just over a year to live when the Brighton metalcore masters stepped up to headline the Monster Stage in 2015. They’d smashed Slam Dunk before but the emotion flowing through C.A.N.C.E.R and These Colours Don’t Run that weekend were spine-tingling. “Thank you Slam Dunk for a great weekend,” Tom would tweet the day after, “and thank you so much to all the friends I saw, who were so supportive and kind to me.” A memory to hold dear.
Planning a 10th anniversary get-together? You could find a far worse master of ceremonies than Panic! At The Disco mainman Brendon Urie. Kicking off with the aptly-titled Don’t Threaten Me With A Good Time before rocketing through a monster set that included both I Write Sins Not Tragedies and a brilliant cover of Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody, this was a statement performance from artists en route to even greater success. Nothing less than the celebration Slam Dunk’s first decade deserved.
“We’ll never write another album like Take To The Skies,” Enter Shikari main-brain Rou Reynolds wrote in the run-up to the St Albans supremos’ 10th anniversary celebration of their inimitably raucous debut at Slam Dunk 2017. Indeed, it’s hard to imagine another album play-through inspiring the sheer chaos that TTTS did, throughout an unhinged, out-of-sequence 80-minute assault. Their barnstorming 2023 headline almost makes the list, too, but this was simply irresistible.
Technical issues cut Frank Carter & The Rattlesnakes’ set a couple of songs short as Slam Dunk took over Leeds’ First Direct Arena in 2018. Thankfully, pissed-off Frank Carter is peak Frank Carter. Riling up the heaving crowd, then chucking himself headlong in amongst them, everything from the frantic Fangs to a never-more-cathartic sing-along for I Hate You felt absolutely essential. Get back on the bill soon, eh Frank?
Slam Dunk’s Impericon Stage was unthinkably overloaded in 2019. The top four bands – Cancer Bats, The Bronx, Gallows and Glassjaw – were all unimpeachably heavy elder-statesmen. But before they even hit the stage, there was Knocked Loose and Turnstile in lunch slots. Rather than wondering how far they could go back in 2019, everyone down the front was too busy trying not to get knocked the fuck out. “When we looked back at that line-up recently, we realised just how big it actually was,” admits Ben Ray. “At the time, none of us knew how huge those bands would become. Having Turnstile and Knocked Loose on the lower half of the bill is unbelievable in hindsight. But that’s what Slam Dunk does. We’ve always been proud of giving bands that mid-card platform before they explode. Seeing them go from those slots in 2019 to the heights they’re hitting now has been incredible, and we’re thrilled to have Knocked Loose back again in 2026.”
Slam Dunk generally feels like the start of festival season. Arriving in September 2021, the first post-COVID edition was more the end of a long, suffocating silence. Wary of ongoing complications getting overseas acts into the country, it was also an opportunity to showcase the UK’s finest. And there was no better band to shake everyone out of their stupor than Don Broco grabbing their first festival headline with both hands and getting gleefully silly.
There was a host of heavyweight sets in 2022 to underline that Slam Dunk was back in business – from the raw catharsis of Beartooth and Alexisonfire, to unrelenting party pogoing courtesy of The Interrupters and Dropkick Murphys. Unveiling a massive, decidedly metal-looking horned Devil’s head, Marshall stacks dripping with blood and enough fire to scorch the heavens, though, there was an apocalyptic feel for Sum 41. It’d be almost three more years before the great Canadians finally called it a day, but there was no better place than Slam Dunk to begin their long goodbye.
It’s not every day that a show begins with the keyboardist holding her frontman’s severed head aloft. It’s not every day that a band announce a record and era as exciting as Sanguivore, either. Picking up where they’d left off in November 2022 at London’s Roundhouse, Creeper cranked the bloodstained theatricality to introduce a freshly vampiric iteration of the band. And with first performances for goth banger Cry To Heaven, every lost soul was left (blood)thirsty for more!
We’ve already covered You Me At Six’s meteoric rise as Slam Dunk headliners. So when the Surrey rock overlords announced that they’d be going their separate ways, there was only ever going to be one choice for their final festival. From soaking up the sunshine in Hatfield, to watching tears be lost in Leeds’ rain, it was a poignant reminder not just how Josh Franceschi and co. transformed from irrepressible upstarts to indomitable elder-statesmen, but also of how Slam Dunk has become the kind of institution able to span bands’ big breaks on through to their bittersweet goodbyes. “Watching them grow into one of the UK’s biggest bands in the scene, and then the full-circle of being the place that they said their goodbyes, was emotional,” says Ben Ray. “It was a privilege to be such a constant part of their journey for so long. And the guys in the band will laugh when I say it honestly was an honour and a privilege to watch them die.”
It felt less a question of ‘if’ than ‘when’ A Day To Remember would turn up. 2025 saw the Ocala firestarters finally pull the trigger. From the opening shout-along for The Downfall Of Us All, it was an overwhelming celebration of the energy and attitude that makes Slam Dunk great – and resounding proof that there’s no shortage of heroes to call on, even after all these years.
Slam Dunk Festival takes place at Hatfield Park on Saturday, May 23 and Leeds Temple Newsam on Sunday, May 24. This feature originally appeared in the winter 2025 issue of Kerrang!.
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