JERA ON AIR 2026 [LIVE] | Three days inside the heat of Ysselsteyn

Jera On Air | Ysselsteyn, Netherlands | 25–27 June 2026

There are few places where the different branches of the alternative scene cross over as naturally as Jera On Air.

Hardcore bands move between stages shared with metalcore, punk, post-hardcore and alternative acts. Established names sit alongside bands still working their way upwards. None of it feels particularly forced. Jera has spent years building an audience that understands those connections.

In 2026, there was another factor to deal with: heat.

Temperatures climbed towards 40°C during the weekend, turning shade and water into necessities and making every packed tent and moving pit considerably harder work. It changed the pace of the festival, but not much else. Crowds kept moving, bands kept asking for more, and three days in Ysselsteyn became an endurance test with a very good soundtrack.

From Dying Wish opening our Thursday to Hatebreed bringing Saturday deep into hardcore territory, this was Jera On Air 2026 from the stages we caught.

DAY ONE [FRAMED] | No easing into it

Thursday did not need much time to get going. Dying Wish were already on stage at 15:30, and from there the day moved through metalcore, hardcore, punk and post-hardcore before Architects closed our night.

Dying Wish

Dying Wish are part of a generation making the boundaries between metalcore and hardcore increasingly irrelevant. Emma Boster fronts the band with the kind of intensity that immediately demands attention, but reducing Dying Wish to aggression misses what makes them interesting. There is melody underneath the weight, and enough connection to older metalcore to make their influences clear without leaving them stuck in the past.

Placed early on Thursday, their set felt like exactly the kind of booking Jera does well. Not hidden away as an emerging name, but given space in front of an audience likely to understand them. A strong start.

Wargasm

Wargasm changed the atmosphere. Where Dying Wish lean into hardcore and metalcore, the British duo pull from electronic music, nu-metal, punk and industrial noise. On paper, it is messy. On stage, that is largely the point.

Sam Matlock and Milkie Way work through confrontation rather than restraint. The performance is physical, chaotic and deliberately abrasive, with the electronic elements adding another layer underneath the guitars. Jera is increasingly broad enough for a band like Wargasm to make complete sense here.

Bury Tomorrow

By early evening, Bury Tomorrow brought things firmly back towards modern British metalcore. The Southampton band have become one of the genre’s dependable European live acts, and their Jera appearance showed why. Heavy sections are built for movement, while the melodic side gives the songs enough scale to work beyond a club environment.

There was little need to overcomplicate it. Bury Tomorrow know what a festival crowd needs from them, and Jera gave it back.

Alexisonfire

Alexisonfire brought something different to Thursday. Their relationship with post-hardcore has always been difficult to reduce to a single sound. Aggression, melody and atmosphere coexist, while the contrast between George Pettit’s harsh vocals and Dallas Green’s cleaner voice remains central to what makes the band immediately recognisable.

Years have passed since the period when Alexisonfire first became one of post-hardcore’s defining names, but live they do not feel preserved from another era. There is still tension in these songs, and when that tension breaks, they still hit hard.

Madball

If Alexisonfire brought dynamics, Madball stripped everything back to hardcore fundamentals. Few bands need less explanation.

New York hardcore has travelled far beyond New York, and Madball have spent decades carrying that sound around the world. At Jera, the formula remained direct: riffs, movement and Freddy Cricien controlling the space between stage and crowd. Hardcore changes constantly around its edges.

Madball remain Madball.

The Menzingers

The Menzingers offered a useful change of pace late on Thursday. After several hours dominated by heavier music, their melodic punk brought the focus back towards songs, hooks and voices from the crowd.

That does not make the performance less intense. It simply moves the energy somewhere else. Jera works particularly well when these transitions are allowed to happen. A hardcore pit can give way to a room full of people singing punk songs without either feeling misplaced. The Menzingers fit naturally into that space.

Architects

Midnight belonged to Architects. Their position within British heavy music has changed enormously over the years, from smaller metalcore stages to a production capable of closing major European festival nights. Jera offered a clear view of where that progression has taken them.

The scale was immediately different. Lighting, production and songs built for large crowds turned the final hour into a genuine headline performance. But the older connection to this scene has not disappeared completely.

That matters at Jera. Architects were not simply a large metal band brought in to close the night. Their history overlaps directly with many of the sounds heard across the festival. Thursday ended with thousands of voices, a stage filled with light and very little energy left to spare.

Two more days to go.

DAY TWO [FRAMED] | Surviving Friday

Friday was where the heat became impossible to treat as background detail. With temperatures pushing towards 40°C, every decision became slightly more practical. Water. Shade. Another bottle of water. Then back towards a stage. Against that backdrop, Friday moved from some of the younger names in modern heavy music to bands that have been doing this for decades.

Allt

Allt opened our Friday on the Eagle Stage. The Swedish band sit in an interesting part of modern metalcore, where low-tuned heaviness meets progressive structures and atmosphere. It is technical music, but not technical simply for the sake of complexity.

For a band still building its position within the European scene, a Jera slot matters. This is exactly the audience in front of which bands such as Allt can make the jump from a name people recognise online to one they actively want to see again.

TX2

TX2 brought a very different version of contemporary alternative music. Emo, pop-punk and heavier influences collide with an online generation of alternative culture that does not necessarily recognise the old boundaries between scenes. That can make TX2 divisive. It also makes the project relevant.

Jera putting acts like this alongside established punk and hardcore bands says something about where the audience is moving. The next generation rarely enters a scene through exactly the same door as the previous one.

Annisokay

Annisokay have become regular travellers through the European metalcore circuit, and Friday gave them another festival-sized opportunity to show why.

Their approach favours the more melodic and accessible side of modern metalcore without abandoning the heavier foundations underneath it. In the afternoon heat, theirs was a set built more around momentum than surprise. Sometimes reliability works.

King 810

King 810 brought a different atmosphere entirely. There is something deliberately uncomfortable about the band’s music and presentation. Their material draws heavily from the realities surrounding their origins in Flint, Michigan, and that darkness has always been part of the live experience. Among Friday’s cleaner modern productions, King 810 felt rougher around the edges.

That contrast was welcome.

Periphery

Periphery are not a band built around simplicity. Rhythmic complexity, progressive structures and musicianship sit at the centre of what they do, yet their live performance avoids becoming a technical demonstration.

That distinction matters. There is considerable precision on stage, but the songs still need to work in a festival tent filled with people who have already spent hours dealing with oppressive heat. They did. Periphery gave Friday one of its more musically intricate performances without losing the physical impact required by the setting.

Suicidal Tendencies

Then came a completely different kind of history lesson. Suicidal Tendencies have spent decades refusing to fit neatly into either punk or metal. Hardcore, crossover thrash, skate culture and metal all run through their identity.

At Jera, that history remains relevant because so much of the weekend exists somewhere downstream from bands that blurred those boundaries in the first place. The important part is that it still moves. This was not a museum piece about crossover. It was a Suicidal Tendencies show.

A Day To Remember

A Day To Remember have built an entire career around a combination that once sounded much stranger than it does now. Pop-punk hooks and breakdown-heavy metalcore have become familiar neighbours, but few bands have turned that mixture into something as large as ADTR. Friday’s late-evening crowd made the appeal obvious.

Heavy enough to open pits, melodic enough for huge singalongs and experienced enough to understand exactly when each is required, the band turned the Eagle Stage into one of the day’s biggest communal moments. After hours of conserving energy because of the heat, people somehow found another reserve.

The Offspring

The Offspring closed Friday with songs that barely need introductions anymore.

Their catalogue crosses generations in a way few punk bands manage. People who discovered them during the explosion of 1990s punk stood beside listeners born long after those records first appeared. That creates a particular kind of festival crowd. The reaction is immediate because the songs have already done decades of work before the band even arrives.

Friday had begun with Allt representing one direction in which the European heavy scene is moving. It ended with The Offspring demonstrating just how long punk songs can remain part of people’s lives. Quite a distance for one very hot day.

DAY THREE [FRAMED] | One more round

By Saturday, three-day festival logic had taken over. Everyone looked tired. Nobody seemed particularly interested in stopping. Our final day moved between emerging alternative bands, post-hardcore, modern metalcore, blackened heaviness and hardcore. If Thursday showed Jera’s breadth and Friday its generational range, Saturday brought much of that together.

Catch Your Breath

Catch Your Breath started our Saturday with modern alternative metal built around melody and emotional weight. Their sound sits comfortably within the current generation of bands moving between metalcore, post-hardcore and more accessible alternative territory.

It is a crowded space. Live performance therefore matters, particularly at festivals where audiences can simply move to another stage. Catch Your Breath gave people a reason to stay.

Desolated

Desolated had no interest in easing anyone through the final day. The British band’s hardcore is built around physicality. Heavy riffs, breakdowns and an approach that feels considerably closer to a packed club floor than polished festival metal.

That rawness suited Jera. By Saturday afternoon, subtle encouragement was no longer going to get tired bodies moving. Desolated had another solution.

La Dispute

La Dispute changed the emotional register completely. Few bands on the weekend approached heavy music in quite the same way. Jordan Dreyer’s spoken and shouted delivery turns songs into narratives, while the instrumentation builds tension around him rather than simply waiting for the next breakdown.

The result demands a different kind of attention. At a festival where movement is often the easiest measure of success, La Dispute created intensity through stillness as much as impact. One of Saturday’s necessary changes of pace.

Imminence

Imminence have found a way to stand out in modern metalcore without abandoning the genre entirely. The violin is the most obvious difference, but treating it as the band’s defining trick undersells what happens around it. Their music works through contrast: cinematic passages, melody and sudden heaviness, with Eddie Berg moving between vocals and violin as part of the same performance.

That gives their festival set dynamics that many heavier bands simply do not have. In a weekend packed with metalcore, being immediately recognisable is valuable. Imminence were.

Kanonenfieber

Kanonenfieber brought one of Saturday’s darkest shifts. Their blackened death metal is inseparable from the First World War imagery and historical framework surrounding the project. That gives the performance a theatrical quality, but one very different from conventional metal spectacle.

There is little celebration in it. The presentation is cold, controlled and oppressive, matching music that feels designed to communicate the machinery and horror of war rather than glorify it. In the middle of a summer festival, Kanonenfieber managed to make the atmosphere feel considerably less comfortable. That was precisely the point.

Hatebreed

Eventually, everything came back to hardcore. Hatebreed have existed for more than three decades, but the mechanics of their live show remain remarkably straightforward. Jamey Jasta calls for movement. The riffs arrive. The crowd handles the rest. What has changed is the number of generations now responding to those instructions.

Their influence runs throughout modern hardcore and metalcore, including bands appearing elsewhere on the same weekend. Yet Hatebreed themselves remain remarkably resistant to reinvention for reinvention’s sake. Breakdowns still work, Gang vocals still work. A field full of exhausted people apparently still has enough left for one more pit.

Hatebreed made sure of it.

THE [FRAMED] VIEW

Jera On Air does not need to decide whether it is a punk festival, a hardcore festival or a metalcore festival. Its identity exists somewhere between them. That was particularly clear in 2026.

Dying Wish represented a younger metalcore generation with hardcore still firmly in its bloodstream. Madball and Hatebreed showed where much of that connection came from. Alexisonfire and La Dispute approached post-hardcore from entirely different directions, while Imminence and Allt demonstrated how far modern heavy music continues to move beyond straightforward genre definitions.

Then there were The Menzingers, Suicidal Tendencies and The Offspring, each representing another branch of punk history. Architects showed how far a band rooted in this world can grow. And all of it happened while Ysselsteyn baked.

The heat changed how people moved through the weekend. Shade became valuable territory. Water mattered more than another beer. Every trip into a crowded tent required slightly more commitment than usual. But the stages never felt disconnected from the people in front of them. That remains Jera’s real strength. It has grown into a major European alternative festival without completely losing the feeling that the bands, audience and scenes represented across the site still belong in the same conversation.

Three days. Too much heat. Not enough sleep, but plenty of reasons to return.