Reading Festival: Dave joined by Stormzy and AJ Tracey during headline set

‘My life is complete,’ posted one fan

Dave surprised fans at Reading Festival on Friday night (26 August) with special guests Stormzy and AJ Tracey.

The rapper was co-headlining the festival’s first evening alongside Megan Thee Stallion.

His set included tracks from his two albums – 2019’s Psychodrama and 2021’s We’re All Alone in This Together.

To the delight of fans, Dave was joined on stage by AJ Tracey to perform “Thiago Silva”, while later on in the set, Stormzy came on to perform “Clash”.

Fans at the festival posted videos on social media of the set, with one writing: “My life is complete. Dave brought out Stormzy.”

“Just saw Dave and AJ Tracey perform ‘Thiago Silva’ NAHHHHH what’s life,” added another.

Dave himself had appeared as a special guest during Stormzy’s headline set at Reading in 2021 and at Glastonbury this year.

In a four-star review of Reading day one for The Independent, Mark Beaumont wrote: “When Dave is indulging stirring open-diary balladry on ‘Twenty to One’ (introduced with the observation that ‘the people that are running this country are not good people’) or ‘Both Sides of a Smile’, no one at Reading is missing a Slash solo.

“Yet Dave gives us one, in a cloud of confetti, before bringing Stormzy onstage for a frenetic ‘Clash’ (‘that Jeremy Corbyn one’) and letting literal credits roll up the screens. You sense that Dave is the much-loved gentle poet of grime, but in his own emotional way, he’s a showstopper.”

See the full Reading and Leeds line-ups and schedules here.