PHOTOS: Jimmy Eat World – Great Hall, Cardiff – 12/06/2025

It always feels like a bit of a big deal when Jimmy Eat World come to town these days. It doesn’t happen all too often, and as far as new music goes, other than a handful of singles in 2022 and 2023, their last body of work was Surviving in 2019. That said, Jimmy Eat World have reached a point where that’s no cause for concern. With multiple albums that are regularly featured among the seminal canon of 2000s emo and pop-rock, going at their own deliberate pace is not exactly cause for alarm.

Even tonight, this isn’t a grand return by any stretch of the imagination. It’s actually just a warmup for their Download Festival appearance this weekend, though that in itself only validates Jimmy Eat World’s status all the more. There’s a big main stage slot waiting for them over at Donington Park, just below Green Day and Weezer. By comparison, Cardiff’s 1,600-cap Great Hall is a few flights of stairs down, let alone a step, but again, these days, Jimmy Eat World always feel like a big deal. So, for a set of wall-to-wall bangers from one of the scene’s eternal shining lights, Ross Peacey headed down to catch it all.

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Les Shirley

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Jimmy Eat World

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Photos by Ross Peacey (Instagram)