The term choice paralysis has to have been invented by someone living in London and wanting to have a good ol’ time. Let me explain.
In a city of approximately nine million people, sprawled across 33 boroughs, the opportunities to go out, have fun and listen to music on any given day are endless. This nearly doubles in summer, when festivals enter the equation. So you have to be smart about where you go, because you’re 26 only once and good hip mobility doesn’t last forever, or so they have told me.
Choosing a festival in London is basically an exercise in damage control. How far am I going to have to travel? How good is the line-up? How big is it? And, perhaps most importantly, who is going to be there? A bad crowd can ruin even the best music, and I’m not willing to spend half my day queueing for a bathroom. Rally, conveniently 25 minutes from my house, with a line-up curated by Dev Hynes and a relatively intimate setup, seemed to tick all the boxes.
Located in London’s Southwark Park, the quaint festival promised a day of tasteful music, with artists including Blood Orange, Smerz, james K, Daniel Avery, keiyaA, Parris, Nabihah Iqbal and Roman Flügel, amongst others. Live performances mixed with DJ stages and sound experiences created a casual atmosphere, giving you the option to easily oscillate from artist to artist depending on your mood – and, your attention span. Curated by Dev Hynes himself, the line-up felt less like a collection of festival bookings and more like an extended exercise in taste, each artist representing a different corner of the musical world, but all speaking the same slightly strange,cool and alien-like language.
One thing was immediately clear upon entering the festival grounds: Best. Crowd. Ever.
The topic of a crowd is an interesting one because it’s not necessarily something a festival can pre-plan. One can only hope that the artists they book will attract the kind of crowd Rally had on a drizzly summer day. And what a crowd it was. Young Londoners of all personal styles and tastes gathered together in what felt like a utopia of sorts — everyone a unique character, united by the same desire to have a really good time. No one seemed particularly interested in looking cool, which, ironically, made everyone look very cool.
And our life hack for approaching and meeting people, even if you’re shy? A point-and-shoot camera in your hand. Nothing makes people like you more than offering to take their picture.
Below are some of the best shots from Rally’s 2026 edition that we managed to snap amid the daze of Smerz’s lullabies, insanely good food on the grounds and many, many pints of Guinness
Words by Anano Shalamberidze
Photos by Anastasia Gviniachvili
