Honky-tonk

The Maverick Country team had the pleasure of attending this year’s Country to Country (C2C) 2026, at London’s O2 Arena between Friday, March 13 and Sunday, March 15. A week on from the festival, our editor breaks down the team’s biggest takeaways from a phenomenal show. As soon as you make your way through North Greenwich station and step outside, you’re swept away by the jubilant atmosphere, the vast array of cowboy hats and the feeling you’re witnessing something big. Why the O2 Arena remains the perfect home for C2C The O2 Arena offers an excellent staging ground for just one part of Europe’s biggest country music festival. Indeed, across the whole weekend, the festival saw over 100,000 visitors who also flocked to the OVO Hydro in Glasgow and the SSE Arena in Belfast. The reason the O2 offered a great setting for C2C was the harmony of the stages flowing between different sections of the festival ground. These offered moments where artists took the roof off and a more intimate atmosphere alike. Headliners and songwriter moments that defined the weekend The festival was headlined by Brooks and Dunn, Zach Top and Keith Urban. Keith Urban also played host to the CMA’s Songwriter Series, which was a chance for fans to get in deep with the artists and the stories behind their songs, really highlighting the storytelling tradition of the genre. The Songwriter Series took place in the indigo which also hosted the BBC Radio 2 stage. The station also provided coverage on Saturday and Sunday. Discovering emerging talent across every stage The Maverick Country team had the pleasure of experiencing many of the smaller stages such as the Dutton Ranch Stage, the Saloon and the AXS Big Entrance stage, the latter of which offered passers by the pleasure of soaking up just a piece of the festival atmosphere. We got to meet artists from the UK like Hannah Jane Lewis and Olivia Lynn, both of whom have been featured on BBC Introducing. And lest we forget the Aussies: Tyla Rodrigues, who is set to play CMC Rocks in Queensland this weekend, and Max Jackson who is an ambassador for Australia’s biggest country music event, Tamworth Country Music Festival. International artists embrace European audiences We had the privilege of seeing many of the American artists who made the journey across the pond. These included Annie Bosko, Ashland Craft, Dylan Schneider, Liam St. John, Ryan and Rory, Alyssa Flaherty, Solon Holt and Tyler Sjöström. Many of them had also performed at C2C Berlin and Rotterdam the previous weekend, it being their first time performing outside of the States for the vast majority. When we asked the American artists what they had noticed about the European audiences compared to the crowds they are used to playing in front of, overwhelmingly the response was that Europeans tend to “actually listen” to the music. Tuning in and showing up for their favourite artists seems to be something the emerging artists really appreciated about their C2C experience. UK fans prove why country music is booming If there’s one thing we could say about the UK audience, it’s they really did turn up the party. Many of the American artists we spoke to said how impressed they were with the dedication of the fans, particularly through their knowledge of their lyrics and their fashion. Indeed, the popularity of the genre at this current moment in time cannot be overstated; the CMA recently revealed country music consumption in the UK has increased by 181% since 2020 and has been the fastest growing genre in the UK for the past three years. C2C expansion signals a major moment for UK live music With the festival expanding to Manchester’s AO Arena next year, this really is the time C2C marks a big event on the UK live music calendar.