Robert Smith’s Teenage Cancer Trust shows are an uncompromising wonder

It’s a simple, two-birds-one-stone premise, but a winning one started by The Who’s Roger Daltrey back in the year 2000. After 24 years as curator of the Teenage Cancer Trust shows at the Royal Albert Hall, in 2024, Daltrey stepped back, ceding the captain’s hat to a man whose clout and admiration is pretty much unparalleled in the music business: Robert Smith of The Cure.

Smith’s year – 2026 – is perhaps the strongest to date, or at least the most ‘alternative’. Gold-plated legends have graced the stage in the past – Sex Pistols last year, New Order in 2016, Paul McCartney in 2012, Daltrey’s The Who were regulars too – but they’ve shared bills with the likes of Olly Murs, Ed Sheeran, and The Script. And no shade to the latter acts, but 2026 doesn’t have even one token mum’s-favourite-radio-star. It’s a no-skips, 6 Music-friendly showcase of the best alternative acts the UK and Ireland has to offer.

Throughout the week, we’re spoiled by legendary left-of-centre guitar wizards: from the starry-night postrock of Mogwai on Wednesday to glammy marxists Manic Street Preachers on Thursday to shoegaze progenitors My Bloody Valentine on Friday, for which ear plugs are handed out and, at various points, you fear the walls of the venerable Hall might cave in (if not during the effusive rave-pop of "Soon" then certainly during the extended noise purge tangent in "You Made Me Realise").

As much as it is a spine-tingling privilege to watch the forefathers of British and Irish guitar music remain on top of their game, it’s actually the ‘newer’ acts that provide the extra-extra special performances. Wolf Alice, Sunday night headliners, are now the kind of band biopics get made about, their scrappy DIY punk roots seamlessly upscaled for the biggest stages in the world thanks to the Fleetwood Maccian vocal harmonies and ‘70s aesthetics of The Clearing, their album from last year. The lineup also allowed for rising stars that’ll be the headliners of tomorrow, like the brilliant Nilüfer Yanya; she opened for Wolf Alice with her groovy, rich noir-pop, perfect for afterdark listening.

In other words, the Teenage Cancer Trust shows are not your typical stuffy corporate charity gig. The Manics remind us that “there’s power in the Proles” and “when freedom exists there shall be no state” (and that “Motorcycle Emptiness” is maybe the catchiest guitar riff ever written). Instead of a brand identity that resembles a pharmaceutical company, you’ve got the vibrant colour pops – and exclusive merch designs – of Andy Vella, known for his longstanding partnership with The Cure. His iconic “Boys Don’t Cry” silhouette is repurposed and retooled as the logo for this week’s event. During Tuesday’s stand-up comedy revovling door, headliner Stewart Lee is allowed to drolly quip about Nigel Farage pleasuring himself with driving gloves – and sure, a few people walk out, but in the days of a creeping normalisation of racist and fascist rhetoric from mainstream politicians who belong on the fringes, making space for ‘relatively’ radical messaging (and laughter) in a context like this is important.

Of course, what’s more important is the reason we’re all here.

“Mourning the life you had and grieving your future” is how Verity from Bristol puts it. Verity says she felt that life between bouts of chemo was becoming increasingly unfulfilling, so her support worker said, well, what do you want to do? Let’s make it happen. She helped Verity skydive, go to West End shows, just live – as most British teenagers get to. Although Teenage Cancer Trust’s youth support coordinators cannot take the physical weight of having cancer, Verity says, they do ease much of the emotional weight. That’s what our money – £36 million of it since the shows began in 2000 – goes towards.

Cancer is ruthlessly indiscriminate. As a teen, you’re working out who you are, your life just about to start – university, travelling, parties, first loves; milestones that are enough of a headache in isolation. Cancer is a different experience for adults who have largely sorted that stuff already. “We call them our lost tribe,” says Jane Ashton, head of music and entertainment for Teenage Cancer Trust. We have a quick chat before the Manics play Teenage Cancer Trust’s 150th ever show at the Albert. She explains that connecting with young people and cutting across demographics was in Robert Smith’s mind and is something they aim for every year.

“Music brings every single community together, it brings our young people together,” she says. “Quite often it’s how they connect on our units – through music. It’s a really crap time, but it’s great that people are still willing to come out and support our organisation and sometimes forget about what’s happening in the world just for that one night. And bring it all back to just having a brilliant night in support of young people around the country with cancer.”

Throughout the week, survivors’ messages play on screen as they explain the role music played in their recovery. One of the talking heads is a young woman, Kelly, diagnosed with Hodgson lymphoma at 24, who recalls listening to Fleetwood Mac on a jukebox in the Trust’s kitchen. For a fleeting few minutes, she forgot why she was there and could just get lost in a joyful bubble provided by the music. Grace Kelly, the vocalist of Venus Grrrls, who performed last year, is another of the video clips; she points to music as both escapism and validation, making her feel like she belonged in the world. The lyrics she’d write from her unit bed got turned into Venus Grrrls’ last record.

But having watched Verity’s talking head every night, my jaw basically dropped when she stepped out onstage for an irl speech before Wolf Alice. Her celebrity status felt almost on par with the headline band’s. Creating a phone-torch night sky, the crowd sang her happy birthday. It’s a special birthday, she explains – turning 26 on the 26th, 2026 – one she never thought she would reach. A while back she was given two weeks to live, she tells us. Her liver was failing. But her mum said no – after all you’ve been through, eight years of chemo, a duff liver isn’t going to be the thing to finish you off. After consulting with a different specialist, two weeks turned into eight months, and Verity wants to use that time to make cool, fun, happy memories – like having the Royal Albert Hall sing her happy birthday – to leave behind for her family, husband, friends, and her dog (sadly not in attendance, but was allowed in the hospital ward, yay).

Verity set the tone for one of those performances that has tangible, fizzy magic whizzing around the air.

Not only are Wolf Alice’s new songs serious rock-and-roll bangers and ballads – the bouncy singalong trade-offs of “White Horses” and its euphoric chorus; the surging corners and grooves of “Bloom Baby Bloom” – they have upscaled their old fan-favourites for this new setting and starpower level, playing the dreamy, sweeping “Heavenward” for the first time since 2020 and “Swallowtail” from their debut for the first time since the year it was released. They also give “Bros” an a capella break with lush harmonies. And “The Last Man on Earth” is performed without the full band, just Ellie Rowsell and organist Ryan Malcolm on the Hall’s skyscraper-sized pipe organ, a real hold-your-breath moment that makes the setting part of the show more than it was already.

Rowsell totally owns that stage too. When she steps out from behind her guitar, flying up to those high-note wails that slice through this 155-year-old venue, her cocktail dress rippling in the wind like she’s in a music video, she strikes us as a totally peerless, timeless bandleader. As she does when swanning into the seats and putting her feet up, or choking up during the debut of an unreleased song, “Gospel Oak”, for which they bring out an Irish folk ensemble of fiddle, whistle, flute, and Uilleann pipes.

Maybe the biggest song of the night is “How Can I Make it OK?”, a chest-aching pop masterclass from 2021’s Blue Weekend that grows and grows until it bursts and even people in the seats are jumping up and down. It’s these concise, relatable, powerful rhetoricals – How can I make it okay? / What if it’s not meant for me, love? / Are your lights still on? I'll keep you safe, you keep me strong – that stick in your mind as you walk home. And maybe you decide to answer those questions with a donation that takes some of that magic you got to experience and sends it back to the beautiful young people that made all this possible.