It’s been nine years since Lorde last performed at Governors Ball in New York City, and the New Zealand native returned on Friday (June 5) to close out the first night of the 2026 festival. And with her time on the main stage, she chose to expand on Virgin’s world and, more importantly, deliver a powerful set that reminded her fans just how valuable they are in her eyes.
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Lorde, who has always been an unconventional pop star, started the show by performing some of her unreleased songs. She sang this while holding a scratched synth board next to the stage. “Don’t look for me because I’m gone/Don’t look for me because I’m gone.”
Capturing that self-possessed energy, she continued to perform some of the boldest tracks in her discography in quick succession, starting with Billboard Hot 100 No. 1 hit “Royals” and Virgin’s lead single “What Was That.” Her latest headline performance comes just weeks before the one-year anniversary of Virgin, which debuted at No. 2 on the Billboard 200 last summer. But while she has spent the past few months on the Ultrasound World Tour in support of the project, this will be the first time she will play the revamped festival version of the show.
“I’m the most nervous I’ve been at a show in a while,” she confessed to the audience midway through. “Partly because we’ve never done this show before, and partly because I’m so obsessed with you that I can’t even pretend I’m not.”
All four of her albums captured the moment throughout the night, although the raw, high-tech, raw-material aesthetic of the entire show was still Virgin Coded. Solar Power was the least represented, with Lorde performing only the project’s “Oceanic Feeling” after dipping through a drinking water fountain. During Pure Heroine classics such as “Buzzcut Season” and “Team,” as well as melodrama fan favorites “Perfect Places,” “The Louvre” and “Liability,” live footage of her singing from creative angles captured with hidden and handheld cameras throughout the stage was projected on a large screen behind her.
“Don’t you feel like so much has changed in the last nine years?” Lorde told the crowd before diving into the latter, recalling the last time he played Guv Ball while promoting the soap opera. “For me, the world is unrecognizable compared to 2017…I feel a loss of dignity. Our world feels increasingly unjust. And I feel that it is increasingly difficult to reach my own definitions of beauty and truth and what is true. But all of us in this field, I truly feel that this is the reality.”
At that point, she urged her fans to “show themselves” to the world, or in other words, “uncover” their true personalities. “I truly believe that if we show ourselves, all our brokenness and jagged edges and filth, we’ll start to go somewhere,” she added seriously.
Perhaps the best two songs of the set were “Man of the Year,” followed by “Girl So Confusing.” It’s a 2024 charli xcx remix that reunites the two pop savants, who were separated by personal tensions. (No, Charlie didn’t make a cameo in New York; Lorde flies solo in the duet.) While the first track delves into Lorde’s embrace of masculinity, the second track, which Lorde didn’t perform on the main Ultrasound Trek, is all about her complicated relationship with her femininity, making this pairing a perfect juxtaposition.
But by the end, Lorde made sure to shift the focus back to the audience. Her penultimate number was “David,” which she dedicated to “someone who knows what it’s like to be under a boot.” As she sang, a giant banner was unfurled over the crowd for fans to hold on to, literally united under the mantra “I belong to no one,” which was revealed printed on the fabric in big-screen footage from a bird’s-eye camera overhead.
To close the show, Lorde moved to the B stage in the back of the crowd to belt out “Ribs.” I was far enough away from the stage that I could turn around and watch my own fireworks go off in the background. “Take care of each other,” she urged the audience in her final message of the night. “Let’s go to the Knicks.”
Perhaps the musician will continue playing the revamped show at festivals scheduled for this summer, including All Things Go in Toronto on Sunday (June 7), Spain’s Mad Cool Festival, Portugal’s NOS Alive and France’s Festival de Nîmes in July. The opening night of Gove Ball also featured sets from Baby Keem, Kate Eye and Pierce the Veil, with Stray Kids and A$AP Rocky set to headline Saturday and Sunday.
See Lorde’s setlist for the 2026 Governors Ball below.
Unreleased “Royals,” “What Was That,” “Broken Glass,” “Perfect Place,” “Shapeshifter,” “Buzzcut Season,” “Favorite Daughter,” “Louvre,” “Current Affairs,” “Hard Feeling,” “Ocean Feeling,” “Responsibility,” “Hammer,” “Supercut,” “Team,” “Man of the Year,” “Girl So Confusing,” “Green Light,” “David,” “Ribs”
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