Radiohead play their first UK show since 2017 at the O2

Radiohead opened four nights at the O2 Arena in London on Friday 21 November with their first UK show since Glasgow Green in July 2017. Resale tickets had been changing hands for almost £800, the Standard reports. Thom Yorke said little beyond thank-yous and greetings, but before “Just” he told the crowd Here’s one we wrote on a freezing cold farm in 1994².

The band played in the round, on a small central stage inside a cylinder of tall retractable screens that rose at the peak of “2 + 2 = 5”. They came up through a trapdoor in the stage floor, and left the same way before the encore. Chris Vatalaro has replaced Clive Deamer as the second drummer, and the six of them swapped places and instruments through the night, sometimes mid-song. On “Bloom” Jonny Greenwood joined Vatalaro and Phil Selway on percussion. For “There There” the extra drums came out. Mojo and Uncut put Ed O'Brien on floor toms at a stand-up kit, while the Standard has Jonny moving to percussion.

The 25 songs ran from “Planet Telex” to “Karma Police”, with “Fake Plastic Trees” opening the encore under the house lights. “Kid A” was getting only its second airing of the tour, after Bologna, with Yorke on tambourine. Colin Greenwood tried, and failed, to get the arena clapping in time to “15 Step”. There was no “Creep”, and Danny Eccleston of Mojo notes that nobody shouted for it. As the band left, The Fall's “Oh! Brother” played while the articles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights scrolled on the screens.

Andrew Trendell gave the night five stars in NME, and Lisa Wright in the Standard called it the most cheerful, hit-heavy Radiohead set she could remember. Mark Savage of the BBC found it spellbinding when it came together, though he heard slips in timing and tuning. Mojo found the sound near the stage short of focus and volume, “Everything in Its Right Place” clumsy and “Paranoid Android” underpowered, and Uncut blamed the in-the-round speakers for boxing the sound in.

The BBC reports that the band had separate dressing rooms for the first time in their career. Fans queuing for the Tube afterwards were singing “Karma Police”.

Setlist, The O2, London, 21 November 2025