Mystic Festival keeps playing the long game. Every announcement feels like a fresh punch to the ribs, a reminder that this Gdańsk beast refuses to settle for nostalgia or safe bets. And now the next surge is here, a snarling, glorious parade of extremes that proves 2026 is shaping up to be the festival’s most uncompromising year yet.
First, the crown returns to its cradle. Behemoth are coming home to Gdańsk, headlining one of the festival days like returning warlords. A quarter of a century has passed since they first thundered through Mystic in Kraków, and in that time they’ve bulldozed through the underground to become Poland’s most internationally recognisable musical force, full stop. From the Philharmonie de Paris to Billboard charts, they’ve done it all. Now they step back onto home soil, older, sharper, louder.
From there, the celebration turns into a milestone. Decapitated, the architects of modern death metal, mark their thirtieth anniversary with their only Polish show of the season. Vogg’s determination has kept this band alive through every twist of fate, and 2026 lands right in the thick of their next chapter, a new album in the works, and a first tour with vocalist Eemeli Bodde. Expect steel, sweat, and no mercy.
Frontside crash in like the renegades they have always been. Back in 1993, nobody had words for what they were doing, mixing thrash, death and hardcore into one giant, furious engine. After their quiet spell post Zmartwychwstanie, the band rise again with Mollie at the mic and new fire in their gut. A resurrection worth witnessing up close.
Then comes the razor’s edge. Hostia, the death grind phenomenon played by Iggy Pop on the BBC, bring their own brand of beautifully unhinged extremity. Their latest record, “Razorblade Psalm“, already sounds like a festival set waiting to erupt. Mystic heard it, of course, and invited them straight back to the Shipyard.
But the festival gods were far from finished.
Corrosion Of Conformity land with the weight of decades behind them. The crossover pioneers, the sludge prophets, the masters of groove metal. New album coming, jam sessions flowing, and a fresh run with Judas Priest and Alice Cooper already behind them. This band never ages, they just gain gravitational pull.
Then the Swiss juggernaut. Coroner, creators of some of the sharpest progressive thrash ever put to tape, return to the stage with a miracle under their belts, “Dissonance Theory“, their first album in over thirty years and one of the finest metal records released this decade. No festival worth its salt would dare ignore that.
The chaos keeps climbing. Jason Aalon Butler resurrects letlive., the cult post hardcore outfit whose four albums still glow like open wounds. Fever 333 made him famous, but letlive. is where his fire burns rawest. They’re back to prove it on stage, not in words.
Norway answers with the voice of storms. Djerv, led by the magnetic Agnete Kjølsrud, triumphantly return after years in the shadows. You’ve heard her on Dimmu Borgir, in League Of Legends, in Arcane, but Djerv is where her feral intensity truly explodes. One album, endless impact.
And the latest four? Pure whiplash.
Industrial titans Static-X bring the Evil Disco back from the grave, with Zer0 leading a show that refuses to die. Thrown, the Swedish hardcore metal upstarts, keep rising at breakneck speed with “Excessive Guilt” fuelling their momentum. Gaahl returns with Gaahls Wyrd, delivering black metal stripped of theatrics and steeped in abyssal beauty after their stunning “Braiding The Stories“. And Blood Vulture, Jordan Olds’ serious-as-hell gothic sludge band, finally steps out from the shadows of his Two Minutes To Late Night persona to show what happens when doom meets noir.
Finally, Mystic 2026 widens the horizon once more with four visions of darkness.
Death To All, the guardians of Chuck Schuldiner’s legacy, arrive with the Symbolic Healing programme, honouring “Spiritual Healing” and “Symbolic” with the kind of precision only Schuldiner’s own peers could summon.
Austrian mourners Harakiri From The Sky will paint the Shipyard in ash with their devastating “Scorched Earth“, one of the most emotionally crushing post black metal records of recent years.
The Dutch horror lords Carach Angren return with “The Cult Of Kariba“, bringing their theatrical, venomous symphonic madness back to Polish soil.
And cosmic voyagers Monkey3 glide back into orbit with their psychedelic masterworks, channelling everything from Hawkwind to Pink Floyd while sounding like nobody else alive.
Mystic Festival 2026 is a battlefield of visions. A collision of scenes, eras, legends and lunatics, all meeting in the Gdańsk Shipyard next June.
If this is only the next chapter, imagine what the final book will look like.
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