By Neil Durham

WORTH A LOOK?: ****

WHEN? Friday 2 July, tour runs through 24 November 2026

Setlist: Blow My Mind; Fembot; Talk To Me; Hang With Me; Ever Again; Dopamine; Honey; Life: Love Is Free; Sexistential; Really Real; Love Kills; Be Mine; It Don’t Mean A Thing; Sucker For Love; Light Up; With Every Heartbeat; Missing U; Call Your Girlfriend; Dancing On My Own; Show Me Love

Prince’s Little Red Corvette plays throughout this 20,000 capacity venue as all 5 ft 3 inches of Robin Miriam Carlsson, better known as Robyn, prepares to take the stage for her biggest London gig yet.

• Read on for reasons including what are the results of switching up to arenas with an album designed to remind of the Body Talk era

We last saw Robyn live in 2019 at the Alexandra Palace, a night when it had been originally thought the UK might have left the European Union, writing: ‘It’s a monstagigz rule of thumb that it’s going to be a great gig if a Prince song is played shortly before the act takes the stage and so it proves here with a late appearance of Little Red Corvette‘.

Sexistential, Robyn’s 1st album in 8 years, is the reason why we’re here and size is everything about this new Robyn era.

Harry Styles is across town playing the last of his 12 sell-out shows at Wembley Stadium and Robyn supported him at Amsterdam’s Johan Cruyff Arena for 10 shows earlier this year.

Opening song is Blow My Mind, a reworked rendition of her 2002 song, which encapsulates Sexistential’s apparent mission to recreate former glories.

Robyn returned to the live arena in the US in 2025 for her 1st gigs in 5 years. Before this tour she played 2 small warm-up gigs at London venues earlier this year as well as a short set at the aforementioned Wembley Stadium as part of the Capital Summertime Ball.

Which is to say that Robyn appears well practiced in commanding the stage although minor sound issues do appear to occasionally blunt this performance.

She’s 6 arenas into this element of the tour with 14 to go and we can’t help but marvel at the clinical nature with which all treasure troves of the singer’s career are relentlessly plundered with the glorious 90s Max Martin co-write Show Me Love making its tour debut here tonight.

We have seen this singer on this stage before albeit briefly. She was the special guest of Charli XCX in 2024 for an electric Dancing On My Own.

It’s an electricity which appears here to have been superceded by a glacial tilt at perfection hugely at odds with the last groundbreaking gig we saw most recently here by Rosalia.

We’re reminded of a recent Madonna interview in which she explained she ignored advice to follow algorithms about what was popular to instead seek something artistically valuable. Unfortunately Robyn appears to have done the opposite to adverse effect.

This is certainly not the intimate triumphalism of the early 2010s where we saw her graduate with flying colours from the 02 Shepherd’s Bush Empire to Camden Roundhouse and eventually Brixton Academy.

Sometimes size does matter and switching up to arenas with an album designed to remind of the Body Talk era means Sexistential is good but not the gigantic artistic win Robyn at her very best has previously delivered.

A little consolation though is that a good Robyn is still way better than so many of her contemporaries.

• Main pictures via Facebook courtesy Robyn Tickets
• Have you seen a Robyn show before and what did you think of this 1? Let us know what you thought in the comments below
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