The Strokes: London 2026

The Strokes returned to the UK for the first time in more than three years on Tuesday night, beginning their latest run of shows with a huge performance at London's O2 Arena.

The New Yorkers had not played on these shores since their headline appearance at All Points East in Victoria Park in August 2023. Since then, they have released their seventh album, 'Reality Awaits', and begun another chapter in a career that is now 25 years removed from the arrival of 'Is This It'.

If there have been periods when The Strokes have appeared less than enthusiastic about their status as one of the defining guitar bands of their generation, the first night at The O2 suggested something different. Reports from the show pointed towards a band sounding urgent again, while Julian Casablancas appeared particularly playful as the group worked through a 23-song set spanning almost their entire career.

It came despite one significant change to the familiar Strokes line-up. Nick Valensi is currently taking a temporary break from the band, with Longwave guitarist Steve Schiltz stepping into his place. There is naturally something strange about seeing The Strokes without one half of the guitar partnership that has defined their sound since the beginning, but Schiltz's presence did little to prevent the older material from hitting with its usual force.

The evening opened with 'Lonely In The Future' from 'Reality Awaits' before 'Reptilia' immediately pulled the set backwards through the band's catalogue. 'The Adults Are Talking', 'Heart In A Cage' and 'Hard To Explain' followed during a first half that made clear this would not simply be a showcase for the new record.

Four songs from 'Reality Awaits' appeared across the night, with 'Dine N'Dash', 'Going Shopping' and 'Going To Babble On' joining the opener. The newer material showed how far The Strokes have travelled from the deliberately restricted sound of their earliest records, but much of the excitement still came from hearing those different eras placed alongside each other.

'New York City Cops' remains one of the clearest examples. Twenty-five years after 'Is This It', its clipped guitars and barely contained momentum still sound inseparable from the New York that produced The Strokes at the beginning of the century. Later came 'Meet Me In The Bathroom', 'Someday' and an incendiary 'Take It Or Leave It', further underlining just how much strength remains in that first record.

There was plenty beyond the debut, too. 'Automatic Stop' and 'Under Control' represented 'Room On Fire', while 'Juicebox' and 'You Only Live Once' brought the heavier and increasingly ambitious sound of 'First Impressions Of Earth' back into focus. 'Gratisfaction', from 2011's 'Angles', provided another deeper cut as Casablancas continued to play around with melodies, lyrics and his delivery.

That looseness appears to be one of the biggest differences between The Strokes of 2026 and the band that sometimes looked uncomfortable with their own history. Casablancas joked with the crowd, altered lyrics and resisted requests, at one stage telling somebody shouting for a song: "If you want us to never play a song, request it."
It was typically awkward Strokes crowd interaction, but there seemed to be humour behind it. Rather than five people simply fulfilling the obligations that come with having a catalogue this celebrated, there was a sense that The Strokes were prepared to mess around with their own songs again.

The scale surrounding those songs has certainly changed. Bassist Nikolai Fraiture used part of the evening to reflect on the band's earliest London appearances, from a period when The Strokes were crossing the Atlantic as one of the most talked-about new bands in the world.  A quarter of a century later, they are filling The O2.
That transition became particularly noticeable during quieter songs including 'Call It Fate, Call It Karma', 'Under Control' and 'Ode To The Mets', with phone lights illuminating an arena that could hardly be further removed from the cramped venues associated with their first visits to Britain.

There was also room for an unexpected cover of Blonde Redhead's 'This Is Not' towards the end of the main set. Then came perhaps the most familiar Strokes song of all. 'Last Nite' occupied the penultimate position before 'Ode To The Mets' closed the night, taking the evening from the breakthrough single that helped introduce them to the world to one of the defining songs from 2020's 'The New Abnormal'.

The Strokes have spent much of their career resisting the straightforward nostalgia expected of them. Even now, they do not appear particularly interested in becoming a touring jukebox for 'Is This It' and 'Room On Fire'. That can occasionally make following the band frustrating, but it has also prevented their story from turning entirely into an early-2000s museum piece.

'Reality Awaits' has given them another collection of songs to complicate that history, and the first London show suggested the band are currently enjoying the freedom of moving between all of it.

The Strokes play a second night at The O2 on October 7 before returning to the UK later this month for shows in Newcastle and Manchester.