Slam Dunk Festival 2027 adds Billy Talent, Joyce Manor and more to its Leeds and Hatfield lineup
Slam Dunk Festival just made its 2027 pitch considerably harder to ignore. The UK’s long-running pop-punk institution has added Canadian punk-rock veterans Billy Talent and California emo-punk favorites Joyce Manor to a bill that already read like a scene reunion, locking in two of the most recognizable names yet for a festival that has spent two decades turning genre nostalgia into a yearly pilgrimage. The event returns to its familiar two-site format on May 29, 2027 at Temple Newsam Park in Leeds and May 30 at Hatfield Park, with tickets on sale now.
The additions land at a moment when the pop-punk and emo revival has stopped looking like a revival and started looking like a permanent fixture. What was once written off as a mid-2000s relic has become a reliable touring economy, and Slam Dunk has positioned itself as the genre’s spiritual home in Britain. Bringing in Billy Talent, a band with real arena pedigree, alongside Joyce Manor, whose cult standing with a younger cohort of punk fans is near-total, is a calculated widening of the net.
A Bill Built on Scene Loyalty
The new names arrive as part of a deeper expansion. Joining Billy Talent and Joyce Manor are Amira Elfeky, Forever The Sickest Kids, The Paradox, The Family Business LTD, Ben Quad, Games We Play, Super Sometimes, Shoreline, Car Underwater, The Pretty Wild, Novelist, BLACKGOLD, Future Palace, and The Haunt, a spread that moves fluidly between pop-punk, ska-punk, emo, and heavier fare.
They slot into a first wave that was already stacked. Previously confirmed acts include Bowling For Soup, Simple Plan, Reel Big Fish, Less Than Jake, The Interrupters, Killswitch Engage, Beartooth, Wage War, The Amity Affliction, Sleeping With Sirens, The Used, The Maine, We The Kings, The Academy Is…, Cute Is What We Aim For, Knuckle Puck, The Front Bottoms, Love Rarely, and Cobra Starship. When that opening salvo dropped on September 30, with presale access running through the Slam Dunk app from October 2, it confirmed the festival’s instinct for assembling a bill that functions as a living timeline of the scene.
That instinct is older than most of its attendees realize. Slam Dunk began in 2006 as an offshoot of a weekly emo, punk, and ska club night at Leeds’ Cockpit venue, growing from a single small event in Millennium Square into a multi-site operation with northern and southern editions. The label and promotion company Slam Dunk Records followed in 2007. Nearly 20 years on, the festival’s throughline has held: book the bands the scene grew up on, add the ones it’s growing into, and let the crossover do the work.
Why This Lineup Lands Now
The 2027 bill reads as a bet that the appetite for this music runs deeper than any single nostalgia cycle. The presence of elder statesmen like Billy Talent and Simple Plan next to newer, heavier names like Wage War and Beartooth, and cult acts like Joyce Manor and The Front Bottoms, is the festival hedging across generations at once. It is a lineup designed to pull in the fans who were there for Warped Tour‘s heyday and the ones who discovered the genre through TikTok edits and streaming playlists.
For Billy Talent specifically, the booking fits a busy stretch, with the band also slated for continental festivals including Rock for People in 2027. For Joyce Manor, Slam Dunk represents one of the larger UK platforms the band has been handed, a signal of how far their influence has traveled from the DIY circuit.
Slam Dunk 2027 takes place May 29 at Temple Newsam Park in Leeds and May 30 at Hatfield Park, with more acts expected to be announced in the coming weeks. Tickets are available now via the festival’s official channels. If the first two waves are any indication, the final bill will be one of the most comprehensive snapshots of alternative music’s enduring middle class that the UK festival calendar has to offer.
