"Freak accident" won't stop Kings of Leon playing at Victorious Festival in Portsmouth despite cancellations

The group are headlining on August 24 even though frontman Caleb Followill suffered a serious injury. Victorious Festival confirmed the news in a statement on social media.

They said: “Good News! Following the band's update regarding shows in June and July, we can confirm that Kings Of Leon will still be going ahead with their Sunday night headline slot at Victorious. We wish Caleb a speedy and full recovery, and can't wait to see them live at Victorious at the end of August.”

The American rockers were set to appear at Blackweir Fields, Cardiff, and Lancashire’s Lytham Festival over the next two months, but have had to ditch those dates. According to a statement from the band, Caleb - who performs alongside his brothers Nathan and Jared, and his cousin Matthew - shattered his heel. It added that the singer needed “a significant emergency surgery, that will prevent him from travelling and performing”.

European dates have been cancelled alongside British events. On Instagram today (May 28), Caleb a video to the band’s account and said: “Unfortunately, I regret to inform you that those (European) shows will have to be cancelled due to a freak accident that happened the other day, broke my foot pretty bad, just playing with my kids, it’s pretty gnarly, I’ll spare (you) all the details.

“But we’re fortunate enough to have some great doctors here in Nashville that gave me emergency surgery, and I’m on the mend, but they’ve told me that I can’t be on my feet or travelling or anything for the next eight weeks or so. And that’s a big bummer, man, we were so excited, we’ve been preparing for this tour for a long time.

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“We’ve been preparing for a lot of things we’ve been in the studio recording, we have a bunch of new songs, we were going to debut a few of them on this run, we had a lot of exciting things planned, and now we’re just going to have to pivot.”

Caleb said he was “very excited” to share the new music, and added that in the “meantime, we’re going to do whatever work we can while my while I have these limitations”. Before ending the video showing his foot, he added: “Everything’s going to be good and and hopefully we’ll see y’all soon. Wish us luck.”

The Nashville four-piece are best known for the songs Sex On Fire, Use Somebody, and Notion. Other headliners set for Victorious this year are Queens of the Stone Age and Vampire Weekend.