The All-American Rejects Host a Post-Download Party at Manchester Academy [Photos]

The beauty of over a hundred bands coming over to the UK to play Download Festival is that some of those bands stick around to play smaller follow-up shows usually in venues you wouldn’t expect to see them in on a headline run.

With gothic metallers Black Veil Brides already hitting a few cities in the UK for some post-Download headline shows, here it was the turn of Oklahoma alternative rock outfit, The All-American Rejects, who arrived here in Manchester fresh from headlining the Avalanche Stage a few days ago.

Playing a fourteen song set packed with crowd-pleasers, kicking off with “Swing Swing” and wrapping up with “Gives You Hell”, you can’t help but come away from an All-American Rejects show having not had a stack of fun. Elsewhere throughout the set, the likes of “Dirty Little Secret” shared time with the tour debut of “Kings In The Street” with the encore giving charismatic frontman Tyson Ritter the chance to air one of his own solo songs in the form of “Easy Come, Easy Go”.

Nights like these don’t come around very often so it is no surprise the Manchester venue is packed to the rafters and judging by the faces of the band, they enjoyed this rare appearance as much as the thousand or so fans bouncing around in front of them.

Our photographer, Katie Probert Photography, brought back this gallery from the gig which you can check out here along with the All-American Rejects setlist:

The All-American Rejects Setlist:

1. Swing, Swing
2. Fast and Slow
3. My Paper Heart
4. Get This
5. Dirty Little Secret
6. Sweat
7. King Kong
8. I Wanna
9. Green Isn’t Yellow
10. Kids in the Street
11. It Ends Tonight
12. Move Along
13. Easy Come, Easy Go (Tyson Ritter solo song)
14. Gives You Hell

The All American Rejects @ Manchester Academy (Manchester, UK) on June 14th, 2026

13 photos