Chase & Status join Skrillex for a Boomtown 2026 festival set

Chase & Status joined Skrillex on stage during his headline set at Boomtown 2026, held at the Matterley Estate near Winchester on Sunday, August 16, NME reported. Skrillex closed the festival's Hydro XL stage with a set spanning his catalog, including material from his recent album SOMA.

Toward the end of the set, Chase & Status came out for a surprise back-to-back stretch, playing an unreleased track with Brazilian vocals that had fans speculating about a future collaboration between the two acts. "Big up Skrillex for bringing us through," Chase & Status wrote afterward. "Boomtown crew showed up."

Earlier in the night, Skrillex had paused his own set for around 20 minutes over crowd-control concerns, asking the audience to look out for one another before picking the music back up.

The cameo lands two weeks before Chase & Status headline Reading & Leeds, topping the new Grid stage in Leeds on August 28 and in Reading on August 30, their only full shows of 2026. They'll share top billing with Charli XCX, Dave, Florence + The Machine, Fontaines D.C. and Raye, the first all-British-and-Irish set of headliners the festival has booked in 25 years.

The Grid is part of the festival's biggest overhaul in years, alongside an expanded range of venues across both sites. Festival boss Melvin Benn told NME the changes have made him "as excited about Reading & Leeds as I've ever been," comparing the moment to when he first started the Leeds edition in 1999.

Skrillex, for his part, headlined Sziget Festival in Budapest the week before Boomtown, playing remixes of Jack U's "Where Are U Now" and Don Toliver's "E85" alongside original tracks like "Ratata" and "Diwali," his collaboration with rapper Beam and rising Indian singer Naisha.