What Is It Like to See Editors Live?

Tom Smith is the reason the show never sits still

The five musicians behind him play it composed and precise, but Smith is the pull. He treats the mic stand like a dance partner, contorts through the big songs, and delivers each line with a full-body intensity that fans describe as leaving nothing on stage. His baritone is the signature. In his early days it drew constant comparisons to Ian Curtis and to Paul Banks of Interpol, before, as one 2026 reviewer put it, he "found and honed his own voice." Come for the voice and the physicality, not for a chatty frontman.

The room goes quiet, then it roars

The thing first-timers do not expect is how still the crowd goes for the slow material. At Smith's 2026 Sheffield show "Northern Line" drew what the reviewer called "a pin drop silence from the crowd that most artists can only dream of," and then "Smokers Outside the Hospital Doors" turned into a shouted-chorus singalong. That swing, hush for the ballads and full throat for "Munich," is the band's live identity at any size of room. You feel the volume drop out of the crowd, then feel it come roaring back.

The two anthems the whole night builds toward

Almost every full Editors set lands on the same two songs. "Munich," the 2005 single that first got them radio play, is the most-played song in the catalogue at 844 performances, first aired on 27 January 2005 at The Soundhaus in Northampton (setlist.fm). "Papillon," with its jittery, electric build, is the near-inevitable closer and has been played 630 times (setlist.fm). At the 2022 Berlin show the encore went out on "Munich" then "Papillon" back to back, and the Pinkpop 2026 festival set closed on "Papillon" after opening with "The Racing Rats" and "Munich." If you know two Editors songs walking in, those are the two the crowd will be loudest for.

Hope and despair, not a party (with real exceptions)

The emotional register fans keep describing is the tension the band has always traded in, what one reviewer summed up, borrowing Tom Waits, as "beautiful melodies telling me terrible things." The songs feel introspective and dark and, at their best, thrilling. That said, the electronics the band leaned into on 2022's EBM added genuine dancefloor moments, and some fans who arrived expecting a brooding, "falling in love" kind of night have been surprised to find an energetic, near-party show instead. The payoff is catharsis and release rather than a group hug.

Consistency is the promise, sometimes the criticism

Nearly two decades in, Editors are a reliable, professional live band, and long-time fans see that as the point: the songs carry the drama. The flip side, some reviewers note, is that a set can move at "the same level" without big peaks and troughs when the newer, more uniform material dominates. Whether that reads as steadiness or flatness depends on how much you love the catalogue, but nobody accuses them of a sloppy night.

Roughly a dozen songs, festival slots around an hour, and a proper headline tour on the way.

After a few years centred on Tom Smith's 2025 solo album and intimate acoustic shows, 2026 is the comeback. New single "Call It In," their first new music since EBM, arrived in April 2026 and is already in the set.

What the current set looks like

The Pinkpop 2026 set (Landgraaf, 20 June 2026) shows exactly how the show is shaped right now: "The Racing Rats," "Munich," "Call It In," "Sugar," "A Ton of Love," "Karma Climb," "An End Has a Start," "The Rush," "Smokers Outside the Hospital Doors," "The Phone Book," "All the Kings" and "Papillon" (setlist.fm). That is a hits-forward festival hour with a single new song folded in. Expect the fuller headline show, closer to 18 to 20 songs, to return on the 2027 tour.

Where to catch them in 2026

The summer is festival-heavy and skewed to their strongholds: Pinkpop in the Netherlands, Cactus Festival in Bruges, Lokerse Feesten and Suikerrock in Belgium, plus On The Beach in Brighton and a hometown headline show at The Warehouse at Villa Park in Birmingham on 9 July 2026. They also open for Snow Patrol at Crystal Palace Park in London on 3 July 2026, so the London date is a support slot rather than a full headline show.

The 2027 headline tour

Announced alongside "Call It In," this is the first proper Editors headline tour in years: a European run through late January and February 2027, then UK and Ireland dates across March, finishing at Brixton Academy in London on 11 March 2027. Brixton is close to a spiritual home for the band; Smith counts 11 headline shows there over the years, including two separate runs of three back-to-back nights, and calls it "one of the best venues in the world."