-[6].jpeg?width=1200&auto=webp&crop=3%3A2)
It’s a Saturday, it’s 30 degrees, and England are due to play their last group game of the 2026 World Cup, so naturally London is a sea of St George’s flags, football shirts, and cold pints. Everywhere, that is, except Crystal Palace Park, which is instead hosting the biggest concentration of Irish people in the capital this year. There’s sunshine, there’s pints, but there aren’t any England flags at Kneecap’s triumphant headline show.
When the group first started peddling their unique blend of Irish language rap and tongue in cheek lyrics a few years ago, few would have predicted how far it would take them. Cult appeal? Sure. But a jam-packed headline set at one of London's biggest day festivals? Not so much.
With second album Fenian going straight in at number 2 in the UK charts, this is a group who have long put allegations of being a flash in the pan to bed (as well as beating some actual legal allegations along the way, too. This gig, their biggest in the UK so far, feels as much like a victory lap as anything else.
Mashing up Irish language rap with full-throated support for Palestine and some absolutely ludicrous instrumentals, Kneecap have carved out a niche for themselves as the socialist-party-act de rigueur. Chants of ‘Free Palestine’ echo around the park, but so do mass singalongs to songs about drug-taking, masturbation, and general delinquency. Cuts from second album ‘Fenian’ supplement these topics with discussions of their recent court case (‘Carnival’) and an unexpectedly tender tribute to group member Móglaí Bap's late mother, complete with a lively guest appearance from Kae Tempest (‘Irish Goodbye'). None of this takes precedence over the sheer euphoria of the live show though, with Bap and Mo Chara directing the crowd like two mad conductors. Not that the audience needs much encouragement - the front rows are a seething mass of circle pits and leaping bodies almost before the group are even on stage.
“We played our first show in London eight years ago to 200 people,” they shout, grinning from ear to ear. “I'm no good at judging crowds, but this looks like a million and a half fenian bastards to me!” while the exact maths might be on the generous side, there's definitely a hell of a lot more than 200 Kneecap fans out tonight.
Across the rest of London people are toasting England’s performance on the football pitch, but amidst a sea of tricolours and Palestinian flags, everyone in Crystal Palace is celebrating something very different indeed. Love them or hate them, Kneecap have become a lightning rod to a dedicated mass of fans. “Who built the roads?! Us!” They shout at one point, referencing the role of Irish workers in the building of Britain's motorways. The massive cheer that goes up in response shows that this is a crowd who know their history, and aren't likely to forget it any time soon.
