After record temperatures all week, Crystal Palace Park was more of a dustbowl than a vibrant Southern Californian post punk legends The Offspring hosted the hottest and possibly the noisiest party in town as they played the biggest London show of their career.
London’s festival calendar is jam packed. From the May bank holiday to the end of August, you’ll do well to find a weekend where one of the capitals green spaces is not hosting a music event. With a history of more than 150 years of live music, Festival Republic has been working with Crystal Palace Park Trust since 2021 to re-establish the park as a destination for iconic shows and today is no different.
The Offspring @ Crystal Palace Park
Destroy Boys open the show and the pit with their signature rowdy grunge. If you were wondering what kids who grew up listening to Bratmobile and Bikini Kill do now they’re all grown up, this is it. They open up the pit with some angry riffs and invite girls to get in and dance because “girls deserve to be in any space we want.
Pup bring an oldschool vibe to the mix, reminiscent of Descendents and their compatriots SUM41. They soak up the sun and give the crowd plenty of singalong opportunities, making sure to pack as much music as possible in a very short amount of time.
Pennywise are as reliable as usual and kick things up from the start with Peaceful Day, My Own Country and Straight Ahead which gets interrupted while the medics rescue a girl who hurt her ankle in the pit. They are the fun bros of punk rock, with their warm stage presence and humour, paying tribute to their buddies of NOFX, Descendents and so on with a medley before going back to the basics with Fuck Authority and Society. They are part of the foundations of American punk rock and have proven it to us once again, capable of starting circle pits on command. They end their set with Bro Hymn, of course, and if you’re over 35, how are your knees today after all that bouncing?
In a politically charged set Dropkick Murphy’s delivered an hour of raw unabashed punk. 2026 marks the Irish-American rockers 30th anniversary of their formation, and their music, their message is as necessary as ever. Led by vocalist Ken Casey; the only founding member left of the Massachusetts band they open with The Big Man from last year’s For The People performed with Pennywise’s Fletcher Dragge. 2013’s The Boys Are Back is set to a video of Ice Hockey fights which perfectly matches the energy of the band. It’s not long before politics is front and centre as the legendary anti-war anthem Johnny, I Hardly Knew Ya draws fervent reaction from the crowd. Fists raised, a collective swell of voices chanting. Bagpipes, Banjo’s, Tin Whistles – they all added to the intense Celtic sound.
“This one’s for the shitbag himself” as Casey introduces First Class Loser to an unflattering video montage of the President of the United States. He apologises for his country’s current regime and urges the audience to “Learn from our mistakes,” something that the South London crowd are empathetic towards. It didn’t take too long to understand the concept of Citizen I.C.E. A reworking of the Dropkick’s 2005 song Citizen C.I.A with scathing lyrics, “Too scared to join the military, to dumb to be a cop” drawing rapturous support from the crowd. Boundaries between individuals were dissolving in the late Sunday afternoon sun as the thousands in attendance united in their opposition to infamous world leaders.
Casey and the band pay tribute to the late Shane Macgowan with a touching rendition of the 1985 song The Body Of An American. Finishing with the raucous I’m Shipping Up To Boston it sounded as powerful today as it did blasting from cinema speakers when I first heard it in the intro to the Martin Scorsese film The Departed. The song was written by American Folk legend Woody Guthrie and nearly 60 years after his death, thousands in a dusty park in Crystal Palace were singing about a sailor trying to find his missing wooden leg.
As the sun began to set, SoCal punk legends The Offspring kicked off the show with Come Out and Play from their seminal 1994 album Smash. Fireworks launched into the sky as 20,000 revellers sang “You gotta keep ’em separated.” Fast paced All I Want and alternative love song Want You Bad continued the blistering start of the show, with revellers jumping, moshing and singing with every fibre in their being.
Alongside fellow California punks Green Day and Rancid, The Offspring helped drag punk out of the underground grid and threw it onto global mainstream airwaves. Besides positioning itself next to the skate scene, pop punk blew up in part thanks to the humour that often came through in the music videos. None more so than the two next songs, 2003’s Hit That which segues into Original Prankster. That cemented this as a nostalgia trip for me, hearing some of the most original and most iconic songs from an era that is still inspiring young adults over a quarter of a century later. These are songs that I would listen to day after day sitting in front of Kerrang! TV, soaking up their frat house comedy music videos and catchy hooks.
The energy and boisterous connection that singer Dexter Holland and guitarist Noodles makes you forget that both men are now in their sixties. Noodles throughout the show chanting “fuck yeah” to which the crowd would respond akin to Freddie Mercury at Live Aid. There’s a slight pause to the show and Noodles says he’s learned a new song. He jokes that his “crippling ADHD” only allows him to learn parts of songs so he begins to play the riff to Black Sabbath’s Electric Funeral. In a light-hearted yet touching tribute to the late Ozzy Osbourne, they transition into playing the first half of Paranoid followed by Osbourne’s solo hit Crazy Train, something the London crowd showed their appreciation for, 12 months on from metal colossus’s passing.
In the last part of the covers section of the show, things take a left turn. “We can play anything right now Noodles” exclaims Dexter. “We want the biggest mosh pit to a Taylor Swift song ever, she’s punk as fuck” the frontman continues. Yep, you read that right. Taylor Swift. The band goes into a rendition of one of Swift’s most notable hits, Love Story. The cross over you never knew you needed, and to be honest, could have done without, however, the absurdity of it all, is just what The Offspring have been doing for over three decades, keeping things carefree and playful.
Following Gotta Get Away, Brandon Pertzborn performs a drum solo as the two main protagonists of the night take a short break. They come back to Why Don’t You Get A Job? Where inflatable balls are released into the crowd and singalongs continue. These are the anthems that shaped generation after generation. The instantly recognisable percussion intro of Pretty Fly (For A White Guy) gets one of the loudest reactions of the day as two 30 foot inflatable tube men – the kind often found outside second hand car dealerships – as the frat guy from the music video. They even get a number of guys dressed in the legendary sky blue American Football shirt on stage to judge their white guy dance moves.
After a brief pause, the band returned to the stage to perform You’re Gonna Go Far, Kid, Dexter now wearing an England football shirt, that prompted sections of the crowd to sing the ubiquitous football hymm Baddiel, Skinner & The Lightning Seeds Three Lions answering the question, can there be one day this month where I don’t hear this song? With a resounding no! Teenage rallying cry Self Esteem had those in attendance screaming the chorus of Oh Yeah’s over the timeless power chords closing out a momentous day as fireworks lit up the South London sky.
Music serves as the ultimate escape from the weight of the world, and tonight. Whilst earlier acts bought political messages to the forefront, The Offspring provided a masterclass in escapism. Music not only has the power to educate, to rally and to protest but it also has a fantastic ability to unlock the past, effortlessly returning us to the youth and the songs that originally shaped who we are.
Live review of The Offspring @ Crystal Palace Park, London by Chris Lambert on 28th June 2026. Photography by Pauline Di Silvestro. Photography of The Offspring by Federica Burelli.
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