After five years away from major UK shows, Adele’s return to London was never going to feel like an ordinary festival booking. On Saturday 2 July 2022, she headlined BST Hyde Park for the second of two homecoming dates, bringing songs from across her career to a crowd that had waited a long time to hear them live.

She opened with “Hello” and was visibly moved by the response, asking the crowd to help her through the opening before settling into the song. Her voice did the heavy lifting from there, but what gave the night its character was the contrast between the scale of the production and her habit of chatting to the crowd as if she were addressing a room full of friends.

Did the homecoming live up to the anticipation?

Adele moved between newer material from 30 and songs that have become part of the pop landscape. “I Drink Wine” and “Easy on Me” sat alongside “Rumour Has It” and “Rolling in the Deep”, giving the set a sense of her musical journey without turning it into a dutiful run through the hits.

Her between-song stories were a big part of the appeal: jokes, candid asides and the occasional look of disbelief at just how many people had turned up to sing back at her. She also sent T-shirt cannons into the crowd, including one loaded with £50 notes — an absurdly extravagant flourish that felt entirely in keeping with the scale of the evening.

Which songs hit hardest?

“Skyfall” brought the drama, while “Set Fire to the Rain” made its own weather joke inevitable as the pyrotechnics and rain played off each other. “Make You Feel My Love” stripped things back to the song itself, and “Someone Like You” became a mass singalong, thousands of voices taking up one of Adele’s most familiar ballads.

Her voice could make the vast park feel small. The quieter songs gave the heartbreak room to breathe, while the bigger numbers landed with the sweep of a film score. Not every arrangement needed quite so much theatrical weight, but when Adele let the vocal carry the moment, she needed very little else.

How did Adele mark Pride?

The concert fell on the day of London’s Pride celebrations, and Adele made a point of acknowledging it. She wished the crowd a happy Pride and borrowed a Pride flag from two fans, wrapping herself in it during “When We Were Young”. The fans were brought closer to the stage later, and Adele returned their flag herself.

The detail that made it work was its simplicity: the flag passed from fans to singer, a song shared with the whole park, then the flag returned to its owners. In a show full of big production cues, this was a small, human moment that didn’t need explaining or overselling.

How did she close Hyde Park?

The closing stretch brought the show back to full pop spectacle. “Rolling in the Deep” raised the energy, before “When We Were Young” delivered another wave of collective nostalgia. Adele finished with “Love Is a Game”, the rich, orchestral closer from 30, as fireworks brought the night to a dramatic end.

Choosing a newer song for the finale gave the set a sense of forward motion rather than making the evening entirely about past glories. Still, the show occasionally leaned so heavily on scale and sentiment that a little restraint might have made some moments hit harder. That never quite undermined the night, because Adele’s voice and quick-witted stage presence kept pulling the focus back to her.