"Rock am Ring 2026"

Rock am Ring 2026 is a professionally recorded and mixed concert by Linkin Park in Nürburg, Germany on June 5, 2026. To date, the concert has not been released globally in audio or video, but was made available as a video on demand in Germany via Magenta Musik's online website on June 9, 2026.

Background

Rock am Ring is perhaps the most iconic venue in the world for Linkin Park, due to the widespread knowledge of specifically the first few shows by the band there in 2001 and 2004. As recently as early 2026, videos of the band's epic introduction to the show with "With You" were viral on social media.

Due to Rock am Ring and sister festival Rock im Park withholding one of their 2025 headliners, their social media was full of Linkin Park comments by fans for the final 2025 headliner spot. In December 2024, an interview with Matt Schwarz, organizer of the festivals and CEO of PRK DreamHaus and eventimpresents, was asked about Linkin Park: "There are still a few bands missing. And we want to address the elephant in the room. Will Linkin Park be the missing headliner at Rock am Ring and Rock im Park?"

He answered, "Linkin Park will not be playing next year. Of course we would have liked that very much and we tried everything to get the band to do it, but it takes two to tango. I have been closely associated with the band for many years and have organized numerous tours for Linkin Park, Fort Minor and Dead by Sunrise in the past. Germany is an absolutely key market for the band, if not their most important market worldwide. We presented the festival offers to them personally in Los Angeles, but the band strategically decided against a festival tour in Germany and instead went for their own stadium tour, which they sold out immediately after advance sales began. We are very happy about their success."^[1]

During the festival's performance of Bring Me The Horizon on June 6, 2025, Linkin Park went live on Instagram for a surprise announcement at Rock am Ring, where it was revealed that they would be returning to both Rock am Ring and Rock im Park 2026 as headliners.^[2] Mike shared the Rock am Ring announcement on Instagram with the following years (the years the band played Rock am Ring): 2001, 2004, 2007, 2012, 2014, and 2026. On day two of the festival, Rock am Ring announced a limited edition Linkin Park shirt with those years on it with a few of the band's logos on it.

As the band made their way around the world on the From Zero World Tour, they announced four German stadium headline shows for 2026 to go alongside Rock am Ring and Rock im Park, with two shows each in Hamburg and Munich. Joining four other festivals and a mix of other headline shows, the band settled on seventeen final shows in the era as the world tour concluded in June.

Composition

Beginning in the From Zero era for the band, Linkin Park was limited to 90 minutes at most festivals (not all) they performed at, with Rock am Ring, Rock im Park, Download, Rock in Rio Lisboa, etc not being exceptions to this. Therefore, even though LP was performing a set of just over 2 hours at their own headline shows, the longest in their career at that point, the festivals would only get a shortened version of the show with around 23 songs as opposed to 27-28 songs.

Specifically for Europe 2026, both "Breaking The Habit" (which was performed at Rock am Ring) and "Lost In The Echo", as well as the shortened piano version of "Lost", all returned in the show for the first time since the end of 2024. Due to new songs on From Zero needing to be added to the show, a handful of tracks didn't make it from the initial comeback shows in 2024 into 2025, including those as well as "Friendly Fire", "Leave Out All The Rest" (returning in Australia 2026), and "My December".

When Linkin Park took the stage, they began the show with a recreated show intro of their 2001 performance at Rock am Ring and kicking it off right into "With You", the first performance of the song in the new era with Emily, Colin, and Alex. This came as a total shock for fans and a big surprise, which went immediately viral on social media. Luckily for the band, it appears that while "With You" was planned at least in part for the Hamburg night 1 show earlier in the tour as it showed up on a draft setlist handed out to a fan and then posted online, the secret didn't get out and fans were left totally shocked by the return of the song. Adding to it, both Emily and Mike wore respective clothing similar to the 2001 performance.

Fans were quick to notice Emily appeared "at lightning speed" on the stage from backstage to do the epic "come on" intro scream on "With You", and were wondering why she was singing into her microphone while holding a second microphone at the same time. Mike commented on this on Twitter days later, replying to LPLive and saying, "i thought she wasn’t going to make it to her mic in time so i handed her mine. she made a good split second decision to go for her mic and hit the scream a moment later. the reason that’s a good decision is, we have different EQ / compression / levels"^[3]

Interestingly, "Somewhere I Belong" opened the entire From Zero World Tour (after the initial Launch Show/comeback show opened with "The Emptiness Machine") until Europe 2026, when "The Emptiness Machine" and "Lying From You" started rotating as openers. So by the time Rock am Ring came around as the 4th show, "With You" was already the third different opening song on the tour.

In a unique placement, "Somewhere I Belong" followed "With You" in the setlist as Linkin Park rattled off a heavy start to the show with "Up From The Bottom", "Lying From You", and "The Emptiness Machine" following. The beginning of Act 2 in the setlist remained the same as the rest of the tour, but the middle featured quite a heavy run in a row of "Two Faced", "A Place For My Head", "IGYEIH", and "One Step Closer". Mike stopped "A Place For My Head" just after the intro of the song to make sure fans in the pit were ok as it appeared that someone (or multiple people) had fallen down.

"Lost" into "Breaking The Habit" followed the Break/Collapse Transition to kick off part 2 of the show, into "Overflow" (featuring the "Pushing Me Away" melody on the intro... another song performed at the 2001 show) and Linkin Park rattled off single after single to conclude the show with 23 songs.

Like summer shows in Europe can sometimes be, the weather at the show was quite cold and windy.

Linkin Park teased their "Unshatter" movie before, during, and after this show with a variety of teasers, from stickers at the venue, to the trailer playing before the show for the first time in its global debut, to the confetti being branded with the website for the movie, and more.

Release

The Rock am Ring festival is streamed every year and is one of the most globally renowned festivals due to its ease of access to watch shows online. On June 4, 2026, Linkin Park announced, "Yes, it's happening. Tune in tomorrow." along with a graphic showing there would be an exclusive live stream on Magenta TV and magnetamusik.de.^[4] The evening of the concert the next day, they reposted another graphic for the stream, saying, "Tune in."^[5]

On June 8, 2026, fan uploads to YouTube of the full show and of individual songs were all removed by Magenta Musik.

The next day, on June 9, 2026, magentamusik.de premiered a new version of the show, with professionally mixed audio, new video angle edits, and more. This release of the show was made available as a video on demand to stream and was not a widespread release. It featured a Magenta Musik introduction to start and end the show.

No songs were removed from the broadcast and things were cleaned up overall during the show, specifically the "Rock am Ring Intro" before "With You" was repaired with the full sample of the beat, which was not audible during the performance until the end of the intro by Joe. The sound effects from the cryo were heavily diminished in the mix as well.

Track Listing

No.	Title
1	Rock am Ring Intro
2	With You
3	Somewhere I Belong
4	Up From The Bottom
5	Lying From You
6	The Emptiness Machine
7	Creation Intro C
8	The Catalyst
9	Burn It Down
10	Where'd You Go
11	Waiting For The End
12	Two Faced
13	A Place For My Head
14	IGYEIH
15	One Step Closer
16	Break/Collapse Transition
17	Lost
18	Breaking The Habit
19	Overflow
20	What I've Done
21	Numb
22	Heavy Is The Crown
23	Bleed It Out
24	Resolution Intro C
25	Papercut
26	In The End
27	Faint

Personnel

Linkin Park

Emily Armstrong: Vocals
Colin Brittain: Drums
Alex Feder: Touring Guitarist for Brad Delson
Joseph Hahn: Records, Sampling
Phoenix: Bass
Mike Shinoda: Emcee, Vocals, Sampling, Guitar, Piano

Production

The Magenta Musik broadcast does not specifically list production credits for the release, so it is unclear who exactly edited the audio and video production on the Linkin Park side of things.