Borderline Festival – Night one live gallery and review from The Workmans Club & Project Arts Centre Dublin 20.02.2026

If there was one word we could use to describe Borderline Festival this year, it’s intense. Dozens of acts took over three stages across the weekend, delivering a relentless showcase of both homegrown and international talent. From grunge-leaning guitar bands to ambient dreamscapes and gothic pop theatrics, Borderline delivered in a massive way.

At The Workman’s Club, standout performances from Bleech 9:3 and Boko Yout set an uncompromising tone. Bleech 9:3 opened proceedings with a set that felt far too big for the room, and we mean that in the best possible way. Comparisons to Wunderhorse are inevitable, but Bleech lean darker, heavier, more volatile. The guitar drive on tracks like “Cannonball” and closing track “Ceiling” truly rattled us. It was the kind of performance that makes you feel like you’re witnessing a band moments before they blow up.

Boko Yout followed without allowing us a second to breathe. The back-to-back scheduling meant the energy never dipped in the room. The humorously self-described “blackest band in Sweden” are difficult to categorise, and that’s precisely their strength. Frontman Boko Yout (Paul Adamah) commanded the stage from the outset, delivering one of the most captivating frontman performances of the weekend. When the bassline of “IGNORED” kicked in, the crowd erupted into chaos. It was theatrical, explosive, completely mad.

Across the way at Project Arts Centre, the atmosphere shifted but the intensity remained. Art School Girlfriend delivered one of the weekend’s most immersive sets upstairs. Ambient-electronic fans packed the room early to catch her first live show in over a year, and she didn’t disappoint. A haze-filled stage wrapped Polly Mackey in a soft glow, amplifying the dreamlike quality of tracks like “Is It Light Where You Are” and “Heaven Hanging Low.” The performance felt almost suspended in time – delicate, haunting and deeply absorbing.

Later, Shortstraw injected a different kind of chaos. Erin West bounded across the stage with a directness that felt both confrontational and exhilarating. Grime-inflected beats and spoken-word passages collided with punk urgency, creating a set that was raw and fiercely alive. Fans of The Prodigy or The Streets would find plenty to love in her relentless delivery. Having already supported the likes of Soft Play and The Libertines, it feels inevitable that she’ll soon be headlining her own sizable stages here.

Taking the late-night spotlight was U.S. goth-pop artist DeathByRomy. The Californian songwriter has built a formidable online following through her genre-blurring, dark explorations of mental health and mortality. Onstage, that intensity translated into something visceral. Backed by a band that perfectly matched the aesthetic, she balanced her theatrical flair with an intense emotional weight. Breakout track “Problems” transformed the room into a singalong.

Borderline Festival 2026 felt like something of a pressure cooker this year. Each room pulsed with its own identity, yet the throughline remained the same: fearless performance and raw expression. In an era where many festivals can blur into one another, Borderline stood out by embracing the extreme – sonically, visually, and emotionally. If this year proved anything, it’s that the most exciting voices in alternative music aren’t just emerging, they’re already here.

Bleech 9:3 photos: