Pulp ended the tour with a concert of rarities and announced a longer break: "Last show for a while, but not forever"
Pulp brought its 2026 concert year to a close on September 5 at the End Of The Road festival in southern England with a performance that simultaneously functioned as a review of more than four decades of its career and a deliberate departure from the usual festival repertoire. Instead of relying primarily on the biggest hits, the British band reached deep into its own catalogue, performed songs that audiences had not been able to hear live for decades and presented "Deep Fried in Kelvin" on stage for the first time. According to reports by NME and The Line of Best Fit, Jarvis Cocker indicated several times during the evening that this was the group's last performance for a while, and after the concert he further clarified the message on Instagram: according to him, the break is not intended to be the definitive end of Pulp. This brought the 2026 tour to an end, but without an official return date or an announcement of the next concert phase.
The performance took place on the main Woods stage at Larmer Tree Gardens, the festival site in Dorset, where End Of The Road was holding its 20th edition from September 3 to 6. When announcing the programme, the organisers had already emphasised that Pulp would give its only UK festival performance of 2026 there, which gave the concert the status of one of the central events of the anniversary edition in advance. The band performed on Saturday evening, while the festival programme continued on Sunday, meaning that this was the finale of Pulp's tour rather than literally the final concert of the entire festival. Songs from different periods alternated on stage throughout the evening, while archival material from the group's history was shown behind the musicians.
"Deep Fried in Kelvin" finally received its live premiere
The biggest surprise of the evening was the live premiere of "Deep Fried in Kelvin", a composition that had held an almost mythical status among part of Pulp's audience for decades. Although some more recent reports incorrectly associate it with the album "Different Class", available discographic documentation shows that the song was originally released in 1993 as the B-side of the single "Lipgloss" and later also appeared on expanded editions of older material. It is an almost ten-minute composition created during the period in which the band was moving from its long-standing status as a cult alternative group toward a wider British audience. NME and The Line of Best Fit state that, until the concert on September 5, 2026, it had never been publicly performed live.
That choice reflected the concept of the entire performance well. According to The Line of Best Fit's report, Cocker announced to the audience at the beginning that they would hear songs the band had not played for a long time and that, alongside them, they would also show a kind of projection from Pulp's history. Old photographs, material from the band's early years, notes and other archival images appeared on the screen, so the concert was conceived not merely as a sequence of rare songs but also as a chronological look back. In that context, "Deep Fried in Kelvin" did not feel like a passing curiosity, but rather like a central example of the intention to open up parts of the catalogue to the audience that had otherwise remained outside the standard concert programme.
The song also has a strong connection to Sheffield, the city where Pulp was formed. Its lyrics are set in the urban environment of Kelvin, a former complex of residential tower blocks in Sheffield, and observations about class differences, everyday life, housing, sexuality and British social reality later became a recognisable part of Cocker's songwriting style. In the band's repertoire, such songs often stand alongside major pop singles, but they receive much less attention live. That is why the first concert performance more than three decades after its original release was one of the events that distinguished this evening from a conventional festival "best of" set.
The return of songs not played since the 1990s
"Deep Fried in Kelvin" was not the only rarity. According to NME and The Line of Best Fit, "Little Girl (With Blue Eyes)" returned to the repertoire for the first time since 2012, while "Forever in My Dreams" was performed for the first time since 2000. The band went even further back in time with "The Mark of the Devil" and "Death II", which it had not played since 1992. "We Are the Boyz" also returned after a very long break, and reports state that this was its first public performance since 1998. Such a running order turned the concert into a rare opportunity to hear, on a single stage, material from phases of Pulp that are often overshadowed by the success of the albums from the middle and second half of the 1990s.
At the same time, the band did not completely neglect the songs that built its broader popularity. The set included "Babies", "Razzmatazz", "Lipgloss", "Do You Remember the First Time?", "Underwear", "Common People", "This Is Hardcore" and "Something Changed". In this way, the programme maintained a balance between an archival approach and songs that have been part of the group's concert identity for decades. A special place belonged to "Common People", one of Pulp's most recognisable compositions and a single from the album "Different Class", which in 1995 became a key point in their commercial and cultural breakthrough in the United Kingdom.
The concert ended with "Sunrise" from the 2001 album "We Love Life". The Line of Best Fit states that Cocker introduced it with a brief reflection on the sun and a toast to the future of the End Of The Road festival. The choice of the closing song was significant: instead of finishing with one of their biggest hits, Pulp reached for a composition from the album that preceded their long recording hiatus. On an evening devoted to returning, the passage of time and uncertainty about the next step, "Sunrise" thus gained additional symbolic weight without the concert needing to be presented as a farewell.
Jarvis Cocker: a break, yes; a definitive end, no
The statements by Cocker about the band's future attracted the most attention after the concert. During the performance, he said that this would be their last concert "for a while", and according to The Line of Best Fit he also added that he did not think it was the "end of the road" for Pulp, with the characteristically cautious remark that one never knows what the future may bring. After the performance, he posted an even clearer message on Instagram, describing the concert as the last one "for a while", but "not forever". NME carried the same message, which quickly became the main news after the end of the set.
It is important, however, to distinguish the announced break from the band's dissolution. As of September 7, 2026, Pulp had not announced a date for a new performance, a new tour or a schedule of activities after the end of this concert phase, but there had likewise been no announcement of a decision to cease the group's activities. Cocker's wording leaves open the possibility of a return, but without a specific timeframe. For a band whose history has already been marked by long periods of inactivity and unexpected reunions, such uncertainty is not unprecedented.
After their initial split in the early 2000s, Pulp had already returned to live activity once from 2011 to 2013, and then returned to the stage again in 2023. That phase was initially presented as a live reunion, but gradually grew into something considerably larger. According to Cocker's text published alongside the album "More", it was precisely the rehearsals and performances during the comeback tour that prompted the creation of new songs. During soundchecks, the band began working on "Hymn of the North", after which most of the material that would end up on the new studio album was created during the first half of 2024.
"More" turned the comeback into a new chapter
The album "More", released on June 6, 2025 by Rough Trade Records, was Pulp's first new studio album since "We Love Life" in 2001. According to official information from the label, the material was recorded at Orbb studio in Walthamstow, London, over just three weeks, beginning on November 18, 2024, with producer James Ford. Cocker said at the time that it was the shortest period in which the band had ever recorded an album and described the entire project as something that, after returning to the stage, had simply been ready to happen. The album is dedicated to the late bassist Steve Mackey, a long-time member of Pulp who died in 2023 at the age of 56.
The commercial result showed that the comeback did not have merely nostalgic value. According to the Official Charts Company, "More" debuted at number one on the UK albums chart in June 2025, giving Pulp their first UK number one in 27 years, since the album "This Is Hardcore" in 1998. The same source also states that "More" was the best-selling vinyl album of that week in the United Kingdom. In 2025, the album was also among the nominees for the Mercury Prize, further confirming that the band's new phase is viewed not merely as an extension of its history, but as relevant contemporary creative work.
Four songs from "More" also appeared in the programme at End Of The Road: "Background Noise", "Tina", "Spike Island" and "Got to Have Love". Their presence was important because it showed that the evening's retrospective concept had not turned the band into its own museum. New material stood alongside songs three or four decades old, so the concert could be read as a cross-section of an uninterrupted creative line, even if that line had included long interruptions in real time. That is precisely one of the reasons why the announced break does not feel the same as the end of a conventional reunion tour: Pulp now also has a completely new chapter in its discography behind it.
The 20th anniversary of End Of The Road as a framework for the retrospective
The location and occasion further strengthened the retrospective character of the performance. End Of The Road celebrated its 20th edition in 2026, and the organisers announced Pulp as one of the main acts in the anniversary programme. The festival takes place at Larmer Tree Gardens in Dorset, near Blandford, and has established itself as an event strongly focused on independent, alternative and singer-songwriter music. In the programme announcement, the organisers emphasised that Pulp would be performing on the Woods festival stage for the first time, while Jarvis Cocker had previously performed there solo, including a festival appearance in 2019.
During the set, Cocker directly incorporated the festival's anniversary into the programme. According to NME and The Line of Best Fit, he led the audience in a performance of a birthday song dedicated to End Of The Road, and between songs recalled his own previous connections with the festival and its founder. Projections of archival Pulp footage meanwhile created a parallel between two anniversary stories: a festival that had reached two decades and a band whose history stretches back to the late 1970s. Such a framework allowed the rare songs to feel not like random additions to the set-list, but like part of a broader story about time, memory and the survival of musical institutions.
A set-list that brought together the early years, the biggest hits and the new phase
According to the set-list published by The Line of Best Fit, Pulp performed the following songs at End Of The Road:
- I Spy
- Little Girl (With Blue Eyes)
- The Mark of the Devil
- Background Noise
- Tina
- Forever in My Dreams
- Deep Fried in Kelvin
- Death II
- O.U. (Gone, Gone)
- Babies
- Razzmatazz
- Lipgloss
- Happy Birthday to End of the Road
- Do You Remember the First Time?
- Spike Island
- Got to Have Love
- Underwear
- Common People
- This Is Hardcore
- We Are the Boyz
- Something Changed
- Sunrise
The song selection shows just how far the concert departed from a predictable festival repertoire. Some of the band's best-known compositions, including "Disco 2000", "Mis-Shapes" and "Sorted for E's & Wizz", did not appear on the list, while significant space was given to material that is otherwise performed very rarely. This further emphasised the evening's special purpose: to end the tour with a programme designed for an audience familiar with more than just a few of the best-known singles, while at the same time retaining enough major songs for the performance to remain accessible to a broader festival audience.
The next step, for now, is not a tour but a concert film
Although no new Pulp concerts have been announced after End Of The Road, the band will remain in the public eye through the film "Pulp: What Do You Do For An Encore?". According to the official website of distributor MUBI, the film was directed by the band's long-time collaborator Garth Jennings and combines footage from the 2025 tour with archival material covering around four decades of Pulp's history. The film is narrated by Jarvis Cocker and is conceived as a portrait of the journey from a Sheffield alternative band to one of the most recognisable British groups of its generation.
According to MUBI's announcement and the accompanying official press release, one-off cinema screenings in the United Kingdom and Ireland are planned for September 18, 2026, while the film will be available to stream on MUBI from September 25. Screenings in Canada have been announced for September 23, and in the United States and Mexico for September 24. Thus, immediately after the end of the tour, audiences will receive a document of the band's more recent live phase, further linking the current break with the period of intense activity that preceded it.
For now, therefore, it is most accurate to speak of a hiatus rather than the end of Pulp. The final concert of the 2026 tour was deliberately shaped as a look back at the band's history, but at the same time Cocker explicitly rejected the idea that the message meant a definitive farewell. Whether the group will return with new concerts, a one-off performance or new songs has not currently been officially confirmed. What has been confirmed is that on September 5 in Dorset, one of the most active phases of Pulp's recent history came to an end, with a concert that placed rare songs from the archive at the centre of the stage rather than at its margins.
Sources:
- The Line of Best Fit - report from the End Of The Road concert, statements by Jarvis Cocker, rare performances and the complete set-list (link)
- NME - confirmation of the end of the 2026 tour, the live premiere of "Deep Fried in Kelvin" and Cocker's message about the break (link)
- End Of The Road Festival - official information about the location, festival dates, the 20th edition and Pulp's only UK festival performance in 2026 (link)
- Rough Trade Records / Pulp - official information about the album "More", its release date, recording, the creation of the songs and the dedication to Steve Mackey (link)
- Official Charts Company - data on "More" reaching number one on the UK chart and Pulp's first number one in 27 years (link)
- MUBI - official information about the film "Pulp: What Do You Do For An Encore?", its content and screening dates (link)
- Apple Music - discographic confirmation that "Deep Fried in Kelvin" was originally associated with the 1993 release "Lipgloss EP" (link)