Yungblud completes Pukkelpop headline set with broken leg

Updated 24 August 2026, 10:30 CEST — KIEWIT, HASSELT. Yungblud completed his headline performance at Pukkelpop shortly before 01:00 on Saturday, appearing on the Main Stage with his broken leg in a cast and using crutches and a wheelchair. The Brussels Times, citing Belga, reported that 66,000 people attended Friday’s first full festival day and that the British singer drew a large crowd.

The performance confirmed the pledge Yungblud, whose real name is Dominic Harrison, made after sustaining the injury in a motorcycle accident in the United States. NME reported that he announced before travelling to Europe that he would retain his scheduled appearances in Portugal and Belgium. Pukkelpop’s official timetable placed his set at 23:45 on Friday 21 August, closing the Main Stage programme after fellow co-headliner Turnstile.

Het Nieuwsblad’s review describes Harrison opening with “Hello Heaven, Hello” and later crowdsurfing despite the injury. The account confirms that the physical restrictions changed the mechanics of his normally energetic performance but did not prevent him from completing the show. He had already tested the approach at Portugal’s CA Vilar de Mouros festival, where reports showed him performing and crowdsurfing in a wheelchair.

Earlier on Friday, HLN warned that thunderstorms, intense showers and gusts of up to 60 kilometres per hour were forecast while the second festival day was under way. The subsequent reports cited here recorded the headline concert and the day’s attendance without reporting a weather-related cancellation or evacuation. The precise rainfall and wind recorded at the Kiewit site during the evening have not been established from an archived official observation.

Weather forecasts carry particular weight at Pukkelpop because five people died when a violent storm struck the festival in 2011. VRT NWS reported on the tenth anniversary that organisers had since introduced additional safeguards, including independent annual inspections of trees on the site. That history explains the close attention paid to storm warnings without changing the central outcome of Friday’s programme: the show went ahead.

Pukkelpop continued through Sunday 23 August, according to the organiser’s published schedule. Harrison had no further concert listed immediately after the Belgian appearance in the reporting reviewed, leaving recovery from his injury as his next stated priority. Neither the artist nor the festival has published a detailed medical update.