The Encore Forecast: The UK Gig Fans Who Read a Tour Like Weather

On a damp Tuesday in November, half an hour before doors at a sold-out venue in Leeds, a WhatsApp group called Encore Forecast is doing what it does best: arguing about song four. One member has heard a rumour from the loading bay. Another has been cross-checking the previous night’s setlist in Glasgow. A third is quietly confident that the band will swap the second single for a deep cut because the venue has a hard curfew and the support act ran long. Nobody knows yet. That is the point.

The spreadsheet in the group chat

Setlist prediction is not new. Fans have always traded rumours, squinted at soundchecks and tried to guess what comes next. But the 2026 touring year has made a hobby of it. Across the UK, small groups of gig-goers are building spreadsheets with tabs for each city, columns for support acts, curfews, soundcheck snippets and “wildcard” slots. Some use Notion. Some use the notes app. One fan in Manchester keeps a colour-coded document that looks less like a setlist and more like a train timetable.

“It started as a joke,” says Priya, a 29-year-old fan from Bristol who helps run a prediction thread for a mid-sized indie band. “We were bored in the queue and started guessing the opener. Then someone made a spreadsheet. Then someone made a league table. Now it’s a whole thing.”

The league table is important. Predictions are scored: one point for the opener, two for the encore, a bonus for calling a cover. The rivalries are friendly but real. “I lost by one point in Birmingham because I refused to believe they’d bring out a saxophone,” Priya says. “I still hear about it.”

Reading the clues

The best predictors do not claim to have inside information. They pay attention. A soundcheck drifting through an open window. A support act mentioning the headliner’s new song. A tour poster with a suspicious gap in the running order. The number of guitars on stage. The length of the set at the previous venue. Whether the singer has been nursing a cold. Whether the show is being filmed.

“You learn the patterns,” says Tom, a 34-year-old from Norwich who has been predicting setlists since university. “Some bands play the same 15 songs every night. Some change three or four. Some venues get a different encore because the crowd is known for being loud. Barrowland is its own beast. Brixton is its own beast. A half-full Tuesday in Cardiff is not the same as a Saturday in Manchester.”

Venue-specific lore matters. Fans talk about the “Barrowland bounce”, the “Albert Hall hush” and the “Norwich encore”. Some of it is superstition. Some of it is pattern recognition. Either way, it makes the wait feel active. “It’s like reading the sky before it rains,” Tom says. “You’re not controlling it. You’re just paying attention.”

The spoiler problem

There is an etiquette to all this. Not everyone wants to know. Prediction groups tend to keep their guesses in private chats or clearly marked threads, because posting a likely setlist in a main fan group is considered bad form. The thrill is in the puzzle, not in ruining it for someone who has been waiting months for the surprise.

“We have a rule: no spoilers in the main chat,” Priya says. “If you want to talk forecasts, you come to the forecast chat. It’s like a separate room at a party.”

After the show, the same fans often upload the real setlist to setlist.fm, where it becomes evidence for the next city. The cycle continues. Prediction becomes record. Record becomes clue. The spreadsheet grows.

When the forecast fails

The forecast is wrong all the time. A band swaps in a cover. A singer’s voice dictates a shorter set. A guest guitarist turns up and changes everything. The encore is not the one anybody expected. The group chat fills with laughing emojis and mock outrage.

“Being wrong is honestly the best bit,” Tom says. “If you’re right, you feel clever for ten minutes. If you’re wrong, you get a new song, or a weird one-off, or a story. The misses are more interesting.”

Some predictors keep a “miss log” — a list of the most spectacularly incorrect guesses. One fan in Sheffield claims to have predicted a three-song encore that turned out to be a single acoustic number and a thank-you. Another once insisted the tour would open with the same song every night; the band opened with a different song for the rest of the run. The log is not a record of failure. It is a record of devotion.

Why the forecast matters

At its heart, setlist prediction is a way of paying attention to something you love. It turns the dead time before a gig — the queue, the train, the anxious hour in the pub — into part of the event. It gives fans who cannot get to every date a way to follow along. It makes the tour feel like a story with chapters, not just a series of nights.

And when the doors finally open and the lights go down, the forecast gives way to the thing itself. The crowd roars. The band plays something nobody predicted. The group chat goes quiet for a minute, then explodes. The spreadsheet will be updated tomorrow. Tonight, everyone is just a fan in a room, getting exactly what they came for.