KETTAMA at Leeds Festival: euphoric house for the festival dancefloor
KETTAMA arrives at Bramham Park at a time when his sound is simultaneously firmly rooted in club culture and distinctive enough to work in front of a large festival audience. Galway DJ and producer Evan Campbell has spent years building a style around hard-hitting house rhythms, huge chords, vocal motifs, and elements of trance, garage, and rave. The result is not sets that rely on a single narrow subgenre, but fast and emotional shifts between groove, tension, and major moments of energy release.
Leeds Festival 2026 runs from Thursday, August 27 to Sunday, August 30 at Bramham Park. An important practical note for visitors: although the four-day festival period begins on August 27, KETTAMA is listed in the currently published schedule for Friday, August 28 on The Gallery presented by Budweiser stage. This means that the festival ticket start date and the day of his performance are not the same thing. The exact time of KETTAMA's set has not yet been listed in the available schedule, so it is worth checking again before setting off.
It is worth securing tickets in good time.
Why KETTAMA is one of the more interesting electronic acts of the weekend
KETTAMA emerged from Galway's electronic scene and had already attracted wider attention by the end of the 2010s. Bucklyn Bridge from 2018 and the track B O D Y were important early steps, while later releases increasingly clearly combined house foundations with influences from the '90s, trance, eurodance, and harder rave textures. In a 2025 interview with Mixmag, he himself emphasized that big harmonic builds and vocals are among his main creative strengths, and that combination is easy to recognize in his more recent releases as well.
His debut album Archangel was released on October 3, 2025. The album has 15 tracks and includes collaborations with artists such as Interplanetary Criminal, DJ HEARTSTRING, KLP, Fred again.., Shady Nasty, and Prospa. For a festival visitor, more important than the guest list itself is what the album says about KETTAMA's current phase: he is no longer simply a producer of individual club tools and DJ favorites, but an artist who has turned his euphoric, hard, and melodic approach into a complete album.
Among the key titles from this phase are Yosemite with Interplanetary Criminal, It Gets Better (Forever Mix), Man With a Second Face, and Air Maxes. In 2026, he continued releasing new music. Comes and Goes was released in May, Pumpin with Partiboi69 in June, and a Dom Dolla remix of Comes and Goes was released in July. At the beginning of August, Apple Music also listed Pumpin (Robbie Doherty Remix) as the latest release on his profile.
Comes and Goes demonstrates particularly well that KETTAMA's audience is no longer limited to specialized club circles. In 2026, the track entered the UK singles chart, where its highest position was number 77, while it reached number 22 on the UK dance chart. In Ireland, it reached number 19. These results do not turn KETTAMA into a conventional pop artist, but they show how far his sound has expanded beyond DJ sets and the underground channels through which he originally built his reputation.
What his festival set might sound like
With a DJ performance, there is no reason to promise an exact set list in advance. KETTAMA changes the music depending on the audience, time slot, and venue, and the festival performance in Leeds should not be treated as a copy of any previous set. Still, there are verifiable examples that provide a good sense of his approach.
Australian broadcaster triple j aired a recording in June 2026 of his earlier festival set from Beyond The Valley. That set featured his own tracks Pretty Green Eyes, Man With a Second Face, Yosemite, HARDSTYLE 2, and It Gets Better, alongside house, rave, and club tracks by other artists as well as his remixes. That selection illustrates his practice well: recognizable original material is not separated from the DJ selection, but incorporated into the wider flow of the set.
Ahead of the album Archangel, Mixmag described him through emotional, maximalist club moments, while Campbell emphasized in the same conversation that house music is his fundamental starting point. For the audience at Bramham Park, that means it is reasonable to expect a rhythmically solid set with a clear house foundation, but also excursions into harder, faster, or trance-tinted moments. What is not reasonable is to claim in advance that a particular track will definitely be played or that the set will have a particular closing moment.
- If you most enjoy house with huge chords and vocal hooks, KETTAMA is a very direct choice.
- If you follow the newer wave of the British and Irish club scene, his set connects several current trends without confining itself to a single subgenre.
- If you know him through Yosemite, It Gets Better, or Comes and Goes, the festival DJ format gives those tracks a broader context.
- If you are expecting a conventional concert with a fixed song order, keep in mind that this is a DJ performance and that the dynamics of the set matter more than a set list known in advance.
The Gallery and the role of the venue in the experience
KETTAMA is scheduled for Friday at The Gallery presented by Budweiser, one of the stages in Leeds Festival's multi-stage program. That matters more than it may seem at first glance. Electronic music like his works best when the audience can surrender to the continuous mix, bass, and transitions, and a festival stage with its own programming identity provides a different feeling from a large rock-pop main stage.
Bramham Park is not a conventional concert hall with uniform acoustics and numbered seats, but a large outdoor festival site with multiple stages, campsites, traffic routes, and a heavy flow of people. Because of that, the experience of KETTAMA's set also depends on very practical matters: when you arrive at the stage, how full the area is, and where you stand in relation to the sound system. Visitors for whom his performance is one of the priorities are better off planning to arrive in advance rather than trying to cross the entire festival site a few minutes before the start.
Tickets for this event are in demand.
Friday in Leeds gives KETTAMA a strong festival context
Friday, August 28 in the current schedule includes major names across several stages, among them Chase & Status Live and Florence + The Machine on The Grid, while KETTAMA is placed on The Gallery. This clearly demonstrates the genre breadth of the festival day.
For KETTAMA, this is a natural place in a career that has become distinctly international in recent years. In 2025, Mixmag described his season through a highly intensive festival schedule, a major b2b performance with Chris Stussy at Belfast's Ormeau Park, and a long-running residency at Amnesia in Ibiza. AVA Festival also describes him as an artist who moved from Galway's underground into constant international touring. Leeds is therefore not an isolated stop, but part of a period in which KETTAMA regularly performs at major festivals and clubs across multiple continents.
The Leeds performance is part of a very packed summer run, not a rare comeback concert after a long break.
Getting to Bramham Park
Bramham Park is located outside central Leeds, so before travelling it is useful to decide whether you are arriving by train, festival bus, organized transport, or car. The nearest major railway hub is Leeds Train Station. During the festival period, a shuttle runs from the Sovereign Square Park area to Bramham Park, and the organizers state that this service operates from Wednesday, August 26 to Monday, August 31.
Festival parking is provided for drivers. When approaching the area, the recommendation is to follow temporary traffic signs because routes are adjusted for festival traffic. A special traffic system is also in place on the A64 during the event, so the normal route suggested by navigation may not match the way traffic is directed on the ground. If you are arriving by car, allowing extra time to approach and leave the Bramham Park area is not a luxury but a realistic part of the plan.
- The festival runs from August 27 to 30, 2026.
- The campsite for standard weekend tickets opens on Thursday, August 27 at 03:00.
- The arena is open on Thursday from 17:00 to 00:30.
- From Friday to Sunday, according to the current information, the arena is open from 11:00 to 00:30.
- KETTAMA is currently scheduled for Friday, August 28 on The Gallery presented by Budweiser.
- The published sources we checked do not list the exact time of his performance, so check the daily running order immediately before arriving.
These times are also important for visitors who have four-day access. Thursday is not merely a campsite setup day: the arena opens in the evening and the program begins that same day. KETTAMA appears the following day, so his performance should be planned within Friday rather than linked to the first moment when the ticket becomes valid.
If you are coming from outside Leeds
The festival is not held in the city center, so the itinerary does not end when you arrive at Leeds Train Station. Allow time for the transfer to Bramham Park, possible queues, and entry checks. The organizers state that the journey between the station and the festival site takes approximately 30 minutes, but festival traffic can extend the journey. If you are not camping, plan your return after the evening program in advance as well.
What to include in your plan for KETTAMA's performance
The most important thing is to organize the day so that you do not miss the set that is your priority. The schedule can change, and stages operate in parallel. Once the detailed timetable is published, compare KETTAMA's slot with the other performances and allow time to move between stages.
If you are primarily his fan, the newer material is worth listening to before arriving. Archangel provides the broadest picture of his current production phase, while Comes and Goes and Pumpin show where the sound has gone during 2026. To understand his DJ side, the broadcast festival set presented by triple j in June is also useful: it shows how he incorporates his own songs among club tracks by other artists instead of building the performance as a series of separate "hits".
Ticket sales for this event are underway.
Who will find this performance especially appealing
Long-time fans will have the opportunity to hear KETTAMA in the period after the album Archangel and during a new series of singles and remixes from 2026. For the broader festival audience, this is a good entry point into contemporary house that is not afraid of melody, huge vocals, or rave intensity. Fans of strictly minimalist or very restrained club sound may experience his approach as deliberately maximalist, but that openness to euphoria is precisely one of the reasons for his distinctiveness.
Through his own work and G-TOWN RECORDS, KETTAMA has remained connected to the Irish electronic scene while his career has become international. His audience therefore comes from underground house circles, the new rave generation, but also through major collaborations and more widely known singles.
At Bramham Park, therefore, there is no need to expect a concert that works only for those who know every title in the discography. KETTAMA's format relies on the physical impact of a DJ set - tempo, mixing, bass, sudden changes, and recognizable melodic peaks. If that feeling of a shared festival dancefloor matters more to you than a conventional concert narrative, Friday at The Gallery is one of the logical slots to mark on the schedule.
Sources:
- Leeds Festival - festival dates, KETTAMA's schedule by day and stage, arena and campsite opening times, and information about arrival, shuttle transport, and traffic.
- Apple Music - the album Archangel, track list and collaborators, newer releases from 2026, and the current performance schedule.
- Mixmag - interview with KETTAMA about his musical approach, house roots, huge chords and vocals, as well as the context of the album Archangel and his intensive touring phase.
- triple j - broadcast festival set and tracklist as a concrete example of how KETTAMA combines his own tracks, remixes, and club music by other artists.
- Official Charts - chart positions of Comes and Goes on the British and Irish charts during 2026.
- AVA Festival - biographical context, Galway roots, and the international development of KETTAMA's career.