Mumford & Sons finally came home to Hyde Park on Saturday 4 July, headlining the Great Oak Stage at American Express presents BST — their first BST headline slot in a decade, and a return to the site of their landmark 2015 show. Keyboardist Ben Lovett wasn't shy about how much it meant, admitting the band had built their entire world tour around this one gig. On a golden, mostly dry summer evening, with the set kicking off around 8.20pm, that homecoming energy carried the whole night.

They opened big. The set began with new material from 2026's Prizefighter via the single Begin Again, with pyrotechnics announcing from the off that they weren't messing about. Then straight into the crowd-pleasers: I Will Wait landed next, bursting with energy, the big screens catching the trumpeters going full tilt in the background, before White Blank Page built from its slow opening into that hypnotic, syncopated backbeat that's become one of their signatures.

The staging leaned into the songs. Truth, from 2025's Rushmere, carried a real rock edge — the backdrop literally erupting in flames as red light washed the stage — while Ditmas sent Marcus Mumford diving into the crowd, exactly where a track like that belongs. As dusk fell, Delta got a romantic little introduction, having been written around London Bridge, which made it feel woven into the city itself. Marcus made the homecoming explicit too, telling the crowd they were stoked to be home, and that there's nothing quite like Hyde Park on a sunny summer's day.

If there was one honest knock, it's that the band's more intimate ballads — all banjo, double bass and swelling audience choruses — occasionally struggled to fill the vast, sprawling festival footprint. But the guest list more than papered over any dip. Stella Lefty appeared first for Badlands, then Hozier joined for Rubber Band Man and a genuinely stirring Awake My Soul.

And then the moment everyone left talking about. Mid-encore, Marcus teased a cheeky surprise and brought out Shania Twain — who had come straight across London from headlining the final night of Harry Styles' Together, Together residency at Wembley Stadium. They duetted on Here, the band's most country-leaning track (co-written with Chris Stapleton), all acoustic soul and bluegrass clap-along, and Marcus, calling Twain his hero, was beside himself before she launched into Man! I Feel Like a Woman! The Cave, with fireworks that felt almost modest by BST standards, closed the night.

The support bill was strong in its own right too — The War On Drugs, Holly Humberstone, Caamp, Divorce, Cliffords and more filled out the day. The short version: a proper homecoming, played with visible emotion, a smartly paced run through the catalogue old and new, and one all-timer of a surprise encore. If you were there, you got one of the sets of the summer.