Download festival announces more than 90 bands for 2025, including headliners Green Day, Sleep Token and Korn

Green Day, Korn and Sleep Token performing live
(Image credit: Rich Polk/Penske Media via Getty Images | Katja Ogrin/Redferns | Steve Jennings/Getty Images)

Download festival has confirmed more than 90 bands for its 2025 bill, including headliners Green Day, Sleep Token and Korn.

Weezer, Bullet For My Valentine, Spiritbox, the Sex Pistols feat. Frank Carter, Within Temptation, McFly, Jimmy Eat World and dozens more have also been confirmed for the Leicestershire weekender. See all the announced names on the poster below.

The festival will take place at Castle Donington from June 13 to 15. Tickets are on sale now.

2025 will mark the first Download in recent memory where every headliner is making their debut at the top of the festival’s bill. Green Day, who’ve never before set foot in Donington Park, released their latest album Saviors to positive reviews earlier this year. Classic Rock’s Mark Beaumont gave it four stars out of five and called it “the sound of reassuring rebellion from the midst of the 21st-century breakdown”. The band toured the UK to promote the album in the summer.

Sleep Token last played Download in 2022 and performed on the Avalanche stage, the festival’s third-biggest stage. The fast graduation to main-stage headliner shows how popular the masked metal band have become over the past 18 months, after their songs began to go viral via TikTok in 2023. They released their latest album Take Me Back To Eden last year and are about to tour the UK. The run will include two nights at the O2 Arena in London.

Korn last played Download in 2022, putting on a barnstorming set as the main-stage support for Biffy Clyro. The nu metal pioneers played their biggest-ever UK show in the summer, held at London’s Gunnersbury Park. They spent much of 2024 on the road, celebrating the 30th anniversary of their landmark debut album, and are currently working on their next record.

In 2024, Download festival was headlined by Queens Of The Stone Age, Fall Out Boy and Avenged Sevenfold. The lineup proved controversial for its lack of metal and faced even more adversity when several bands pulled out last-minute to protest the sponsorship of Barclaycard, who’ve been accused of financially backing companies supplying weapons to Israel. Barclaycard ultimately withdrew its sponsorship of Download and other festivals in response.

Download festival 2025 poster

(Image credit: Download)
Matt Mills
Contributing Editor, Metal Hammer

Louder’s resident Gojira obsessive was still at uni when he joined the team in 2017. Since then, Matt’s become a regular in Prog and Metal Hammer, at his happiest when interviewing the most forward-thinking artists heavy music can muster. He’s got bylines in The Guardian, The Telegraph, NME, Guitar and many others, too. When he’s not writing, you’ll probably find him skydiving, scuba diving or coasteering.