Today, Cardiff’s Sŵn Festival unveils the second wave of names for its 19th edition, taking place across the city over Thursday October 15th to Saturday October 17th. Returning in the beefed up format of three full days of programming that made 2024 and 2025 banner years for festival, Sŵn 2026 is packed to the rafters and is proudly part of Cardiff Music City Festival (2nd-17th October) for the third year running, building an ambitious annual collaboration in Cardiff across two weeks, which includes Llais and the Welsh Music Prize.
This year’s edition of the festival continues to pull together a veritable who’s who of local, national and international talent, with some of the buzziest new names out there joined by gems of the Welsh music scene. As always, Sŵn continues to use its platform to champion the stars of tomorrow as well as those making some of the most game-changing, leftfield music.
Leading the second batch of names announced for this year’s festival are Manchester quartet Westside Cowboy. Undoubtedly one of the breakout indie-rock success stories of recent years, the band hit Cardiff hot off the heels of releasing their hugely anticipated debut album It Goes On. Impeccably cool London trio Bar Italia make their Sŵn debut this year bringing their recently released fifth album Some Like It Hot to town.
Another act taking 2026 by storm, London-via-Manchester quintet Truthpaste fresh from releasing their hugely buzzy debut EP I Don’t Know Either earlier this year in a collaboration between the highly influential Dirty Hit label and trendsetter imprint Memorials of Distinction. Expect a hugely infectious fusion of folk, pop and electronic flourishes. Meanwhile, with her debut album BODYSCANNER due out later this month, Berlin-based, Austria-born post-club trailblazer Uche Yara heads to Cardiff with a bag packed to bursting with alternative pop, R&B, indie and woozy dub.
Earlier this year, Sŵn announced a stacked first wave of names for the festival which included the likes of breakout Irish folk star Dove Ellis, London soul visionary Bel Cobain, thrillingly abrasive indie-rockers Cardinals, the newly solo Dana Margolin, synth-pop-via-post-punkers Working Men’s Club, singular shapeshifting collective HMLTD, Scottish indie-pop staples Lucia & the Best Boys and tons more in between.
Sŵn 2026 is once more multi-venue across all three days of programming. Venues this year include: Tramshed, Clwb Ifor Bach, St. John’s Church, Jacobs Basement, Fuel, The Canopi, Tiny Rebel, Little O’Neill’s and Porter’s.
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