Sprints and Maruja play 100 Club shows marking 50 years of UK punk

Sprints and Maruja are each headlining a night at the 100 Club to mark half a century of British punk, and the venue is charging 1976 prices to do it. Sprints take 20 September and Maruja 21 September, with tickets at 1.50 pounds, which is what the original festival cost.

The Oxford Street basement did not begin as a punk room. It cut its teeth on blues and jazz, and only became one of the crucibles of the UK scene after a run of shows by the Sex Pistols, The Damned, Buzzcocks and others in the autumn of 1976. Fifty years on, the venue is programming current bands rather than reunion sets.

Sprints arrive with two albums behind them, Letter To Self in 2024 and All That Is Over in 2025, and a live reputation built on rooms considerably larger than this one. Playing a basement of this size is a deliberate step down in scale, which is the point of the booking.

Maruja take the second night on the back of Pain To Power, their debut, and the jazz-inflected punk they have built since. The band said they were honoured to be part of commemorating one of the most important events in the punk movement, and that playing the room with the weight of its history in it would make the night a particular one.

Jeff Horton, who owns the 100 Club, chose the bill as an argument rather than a tribute. He called punk the most important genre and subculture Britain has produced, pointing to the despair, racism, poverty and sexism it grew out of, and said the two bands reflect what punk means in 2026.

Special guests for both dates are still to be confirmed. For two acts whose current rock audiences sit well outside a small basement, the shows function as a rare chance to see them in the room that gave the genre its founding myth. Dates are listed on the tour guide.