2026’s CNE (Canadian National Exhibition) arrived at the end of summer, as it always does, ushering the Toronto crowd out of summer, away from cottages, and back to work/school as it has every year since 1879. The massive fair takes over the Exhibition Grounds in downtown Toronto, and turns it into a merry-go-round of rides, eats, shopping, and of course, live music.
This year’s lineup of shows did not disappoint, including a wide variety of artists from Shaggy to JoJo, to Tom Cochrane and the two shows I took in: Canada’s Electro-pop queen, Lights, and Toronto’s punk/metalcore veterans, Silverstein.
In addition to the music, the other big news for this year was the “weird food” options that were available. This year’s entries included a KD (Kraft Dinner) Smoothie, a footlong butter chicken Taquito, a Deep-fried S’mores Pizza slice, pickle cheesecake pops, and Pickle or bacon-flavoured coffee, to name but a few. The ludicrous food concoctions are typically the star of the media show for the 10-day fair.
This year’s fair (which ended on Monday, September 7th) was the victim of a lot of terrible end-of-summer weather, unfortunately. Multiple heavy rain storms came through the city, cancelling one day of the fair outright. Despite this unwelcome and unusual development, fans still turned out in numbers to see their favourite artists play essentially free shows to whoever was willing to brave the wet weather.
The first Saturday of the fair, I shared a very soggy night with a few die-hard fans of Lights, who refused to leave, despite the opening act cancelling due to the weather, the result for those of us who persevered was an intimate show from a multi-Juno award-winning artist. Lights played a 20-song setlist, including 9 off her most recent album A6, and indulged in a Blink-182 cover of “All the Small Things” as well. Lights has since taken off on a cross-country tour with legendary Canadian singer Bryan Adams.
Pictures from Lights’ show can be found here
On September 3rd, I returned to the fair hoping for a different result than the first trip! After a storm that tore through the city on the day prior and completely shut many things down, the hope of a night without any more carnage was not much more than a wish, but despite the high heat and nearly intolerable humidity, there was no rain on Silverstein’s parade. The band was preceded by a Montreal punk band called NOBRO, who were spunky and had some fun making the lyrics to their songs a little more kid-friendly: “Let’s Do Drugs” was changed to “Let’s Have Fun!” Silverstein took the stage at 8:30, playing a robust 18-song setlist, covering the vast majority of their discography. Silverstein are always a fun night out, and they will head back to their co-headlining tour with Story of the Year, “Camp Screamo 2”.
Pictures from the NOBRO/Silverstein can be found here.
That puts a nice bow on the end of the summer of 2026. Look forward to next year’s interesting culinary offerings and what musical acts will be asked to grace the near-century-old Bandshell Stage.