Hylands Park, Chelmsford – Sunday 28 June 2026

If Friday was about rock anthems and Saturday about nineties catharsis, Sunday was always going to be the festival’s most heart-on-sleeve day – and the bill reflected it. The Lumineers headlined and closed the inaugural State Fayre, capping a day that felt purpose-built for the festival’s rootsy, Americana-leaning identity.

There was plenty to fill the hours beforehand. American roots-rock royalty Counting Crows brought their catalogue to the Main Stage, Orville Peck and his remarkable voice drew a big crowd, and there were strong sets from KT Tunstall, Dylan Gossett, The Coral and the fast-rising Irish folk act Amble. It was a day that rewarded wandering between stages and stumbling on something new – exactly what a festival like this should offer.

The Lumineers were a fitting band to send everyone home. Founded by Wesley Schultz and Jeremiah Fraites, with five albums behind them including last year’s Automatic, they’ve turned stomping, communal folk-rock into stadium-sized singalongs, and the likes of ‘Ho Hey’, ‘Ophelia’, ‘Cleopatra’ and ‘Stubborn Love’ are tailor-made for a warm Sunday-night field full of people who’ve spent three days together. The closing stretch had that lovely, slightly bittersweet end-of-festival glow.

By the final day the site felt settled and familiar, and the crowd was as good-natured as it had been all weekend – still busy, still comfortable rather than crushing, still that genuinely eclectic mix of ages and types all happily sharing the same patch of grass. There’s a communal quality to a Lumineers crowd anyway, and it suited the mood of a festival winding down on a high.

If I’m honest, by Sunday I could still sense the odd first-year rough edge, and there remained a faint feeling of something not quite fully formed about the place – the kind of intangible identity that probably only arrives with a second or third edition. But none of that dented a closing day that did exactly what it needed to.