2026: 2026 (so far): Hospital at 30 and a Scene in Mourning

This chapter is unfinished on purpose. The year is still in progress, and the research for it stops at 13 November 2026. Anything that happens after that date, and anything this chapter could not confirm from an opened source, is left out and flagged for editors instead of being guessed.

What can be said so far is that 2026 has been a year of continuity and of loss. The big acts of 2024 and 2025 kept going, a label reached thirty, and the Dutch producer Lenzman died in July.

In February the BRIT Awards named PinkPantheress Producer of the Year, as the BPI announced on 23 February ahead of the ceremony on 28 February at Co-op Live in Manchester. She was cited as the youngest winner and the first woman to take the award. Her connection to drum & bass is by way of sampling and sensibility rather than genre: her hit "Break It Off" samples Adam F's 1995 drum & bass classic "Circles", as Chartmetric noted in 2024, and the BPI cited "Boy's a Liar", which peaked at number 2 on the UK singles chart. It matters here as evidence that breakbeat vocabulary had become part of mainstream pop's toolkit.

Chase & Status were among the six headliners announced in December 2025 for Reading & Leeds, which ran on 27–30 August in 2026. They were also on the second-phase lineup for Let It Roll, the Czech drum & bass festival, announced in February alongside a neurofunk-heavy Factory stage with Black Sun Empire, Zardonic and Teddy Killerz, a Drum&BassArena thirty-year night with LTJ Bukem and Technimatic, and a night for Overview Music's fifteenth anniversary. This chapter has not verified how those sets went; the festival dates and set reports are in the editor checklist.

The duo's new album, Generic Everything, was announced on 26 August and released on 9 October on their 2RUFF imprint. Ten tracks, with guests including J Hus, IRAH, Debbie, Skrillex, Little Simz, Giggs and D Double E, according to The Line of Best Fit. Its singles included "Disgruntled" with J Hus and IRAH and "Gone Too Far" with Debbie. Its chart performance had not been confirmed when this research stopped.

Hospital Records, founded in South London in 1996, spent 2026 celebrating its thirtieth year. Skiddle reported in March that the label's Hospital30 Block Party would take over six stages at Hackney Wick on 1 August, with a capacity of 4,000 and more than sixty artists including Pola & Bryson, Fred V, Makoto, London Elektricity and Flava D. Search listings also pointed to Hospital30 on the Harbour in Bristol on 25 July and dates in Heidelberg, Adelaide and Brighton in the autumn. Whether each event took place has not been checked.

Lenzman, born Teije van Vliet, died on Saturday 11 July after a long illness; he was 47, according to Clash, which reported a kidney cancer diagnosis in January 2023. Beatportal's obituary recalled the Amsterdam-based producer's 2014 debut album Looking at the Stars on Metalheadz, the sample-free album Bobby in 2019 and The North Quarter, the label he founded in 2016. DJ Mag reported that Chase & Status paid tribute to him at Let It Roll, playing his bootleg of Alicia Keys's "Unthinkable"; that report could not be opened and is in the editor checklist.

At the cutoff, 2026 was shaping up as a year where drum & bass was at once more visible and more mournful, with veteran labels celebrating anniversaries while the scene remembered one of its most respected producers. The remaining weeks, including whatever the year-end polls and sales lists say, are not covered here.