NOS Alive is a festival in transition

Held in Algés in Lisbon, NOS has built its name on polished production, big-ticket bookings, and a picturesque water-side setting. Last year, the festival welcomed 55,000 attendees per day, with an eclectic offering of international pop, indie, and rock; with acts such as Dua Lipa and Smashing Pumpkins on the line-up, it’s no surprise that the event would draw in such a crowd. Due to the prolific nature of the festival – and less genre-specific festivals in Portugal compared to the UK or US – there's an expectation for the event to stretch itself to cover all bases and accommodate a range of tastes — resulting in unique curations. Yet, it feels as though this year’s programming skewed especially mainstream, creating an unevenness that was hard to ignore.

Thursday’s sold-out main stage bill sets the tone: Mark Ambor, Noah Kahan, Benson Boone, and Olivia Rodrigo. On paper, it promises variety. In reality, it plays like a Spotify-curated playlist of rising all-American (mostly) male singer-songwriters. While there’s nothing inherently wrong with the commercial, the succession of Kahan’s millennial folk-pop, Boone’s Gen-Z theatre-kid panache, and Ambor’s glossy optimism creates a narrow musical palette struck by homogeneity on a particularly global-facing stage.

Despite Boone’s unmistakable croon and formidable gymnast skills (yes, he backflips; not just once, but four times), he struggles to crack at the veneer. His performance is polished; much like a Freddie Mercury familiar. He even deploys Mercury’s famous Live Aid call-and-response in a bid for community. While well-intended, the mimicry feels on the nose and derivative. Kahan, by contrast, takes the pop sheen down a few notches. "Northern Attitude" and "Stick Season" draw euphoric singalongs, tapping into something intimate and connective. Were it not for the close proximity of Ambor, Boone, and Kahan, their sets could have landed with greater impact – much like those backflips. So when Olivia Rodrigo closes out the night, she truly breaks the mould. She bursts onto the stage with "obsessed", reeling through a series of numbers that are both vibrant and fuelled by teen angst, and finishes with a knockout encore of "all-american bitch" and "good 4 u". Rodrigo eclipses her predecessors with a performance that feels like a crystallisation of stardom in real time. It's a valiant highlight for the evening.

Despite that standout finale, Thursday’s main stage bookings reflect a deeper issue: the festival’s increasing uniformity. Although international appeal has always been part of the draw, this year is unbalanced. Most notably, no Portuguese act open either the main or Heineken stages. It’s a sharp contrast to previous editions, where local talent holds space alongside global acts. Instead, homegrown talent is mostly siloed into smaller spaces such as Coreto, Fado Café and WTF Clubbing. While these zones are often vibrant and well-attended, their physical and symbolic distance from the main arenas hints at a shift: a festival leaning away from its local roots in favour of global algorithms.

Despite there being a noticeable domestic presence, one of the only times internationality is overtly acknowledged comes via a roaming camera crew asking non-Portuguese attendees to say “Hi, I’m from [country] and we are all NOS Alive.” It makes what would previously feel like a fundamental cultural synthesis come across as more superficial.

Thankfully, Friday offers more sonic diversity. Girl in Red opens the main stage with chaotic, joyful queer pop, later reappearing in animal costume during The Wombats’ set — a replacement for Sam Fender following a last-minute pullout. Swapping a Springsteen-esque grain for indie revival doesn't seem too far off the mark, especially when The Backseat Lovers pack out the Heineken tent with their rugged indie grit.

French electronic duo Justice, however, are easily the main stage highlight. Their heady visuals and pounding electro turns the festival into a warehouse rave, making for a magnificent production. It's a true spectacle which possesses an understated cool emulated by the pair of silhouettes onstage. There is a bit of a lull following their set which makes space to explore talent elsewhere, like experimental anti-pop artist Herlander and MALLINA, who infuses a pop sound with both city flair and Portuguese Fado tradition.

When Anyma finally takes the stage to close out the night, endeavouring to revive the electronic energy of Justice, it falls a bit short. Sure, the famed visuals (which look like something out of a hallucinogenic-induced nightmare) invite a sense of intrigue, but the music itself feels redactive. However, there is some resolve found in St. Vincent just across the astroturf, who ushers in a sensational glamour and theatricality as she moves through her set like a sinewy black cat with a guitar-slinging edge – "Reckless" and "Birth In Reverse" being particularly spirited affairs.

Saturday’s lineup plays like a crescendo, a make it or break it moment. The long-threatened sun finally appears after a few overcast days. With it comes a re-energised crowd. It's off to an excellent start with CMAT, who commands the main stage with humour and glee. Between her performances of the all too infectious "Take A Sexy Picture Of Me" and "I Wanna Be A Cowboy, Baby!", a swanky two-step, and a declared love for pastéis de nata – which leads to a member of a crowd giving her two to enjoy on stage – CMAT creates a truly joyous moment with a wink and a sparkly tooth-gemmed smile to remember.

Elsewhere, quieter moments give the festival its emotional weight. Bright Eyes brings a bruised intimacy to the Heineken stage, entrenched in a not-so-delicate broodiness. You wouldn’t think that "Take It Easy (Love Nothing)", "I Won’t Ever Be Happy Again", and "First Day Of My Life" would necessarily fall in line with the carefree festival headspace, but they are too good to care about that. It's also one of the first times I hear a political sentiment – something that's surprisingly minimal given the glaring sociopolitical issues that have been brought to the forefront across most festival circuits. So when frontman Conner Oberst shares his disdain towards the “war on humanity”, it's met with audible agreement from the audience.

Though markedly different in genre and overall mood, Amyl and the Sniffers are, expectedly, on a similar wavelength. In addition to putting on a brilliant performance fuelled by nothing but raw passion, the Australian punk band led by Amy Taylor allow themselves to be the voice of those who aren’t being heard, waving a Palestinian flag which incited a “Free Palestine!” chant. With that, a fervent mosh, and group sing-a-long to happy birthday to the band’s drummer Bryce, it's one of the most deeply felt human experiences all weekend.

When Muse take the main stage, they're accounting for a shift from the slick Southern garage-rock epithets of Kings of Leon following the band’s cancellation due to injury months prior, bringing things up to speed with dramatic, symphonic, space-age tact. Their set is extensive and includes anthemic highs "Hysteria", "Unravelling" and "Supermassive Black Hole", but they do take risks around holding the crowd with piano ballad-centred arrangements. Largely it's a success; by the time the encore comes around with "Starlight" and a plume of fireworks, there seems to be a general consensus that Muse came and conquered.

Closing off the festival, Nine Inch Nails round that atmosphere off with an industrial twist, and are strikingly successful. With nearly forty years of skin in the game, frontman Trent Reznor is on remarkable form; whether it be for the more torrid foundations of their progressively antsy catalogue – a majority of the set coming from 1994’s The Downward Spiral – or deep cuts "The Perfect Drug" written for David Lynch’s Lost Highway, and even a cover of David Bowie’s "I’m Afraid Of Americans". It keeps things varied and curious, still retaining the band’s long-established brazenly mechanical heart. If Muse are a sci-fi epic, then Nine Inch Nails are a psychological thriller: dark, urgent, and unforgettable.

And yet, between these moments, the increasingly commercial varnish of NOS Alive is glaring. Corporate branding is dominant as festivalgoers are handed branded fans, hats, sweets, even beauty products at every turn. It adds a surreal sheen to the experience which makes the festival occasionally feel like a showcase with music as a backdrop. But where does this leave NOS Alive?

There’s still a heart here. It beats through CMAT’s onstage gifts, Amyl’s righteous fury, within the small stages holding space for Portugal’s rising stars. But there’s also a sense of compromise creeping in: main stage slots remain safe and conventional while local talent is relegated to the margins, and a festival identity finds itself slowly dissolving into something more generic. NOS Alive still knows how to throw a party. But in chasing universality, it may be losing the particular magic that made it so beloved in the first place.