Nine years after Lorde last played the Governor’s Ball in New York City, the New Zealand native returned Friday (June 5) to close out night one of the 2026 festival. And with the time she had on the main stage, she chose to deliver a powerful set that both expanded her Virgin universe and, more importantly, reminded her fans just how much they’re worth in her eyes.

Ever the unorthodox pop star, Lorde kicked off the program by seemingly debuting a snippet of an unreleased song. While manning a scratchy synth board to the side of the stage, she sang, “Don’t look for me now that I’m gone/ Don’t look for me, I’m gone.”

With that self-possessed energy locked in, she went on to play some of the boldest tracks in her discography back to back, starting with Billboard Hot 100 No. 1 hit “Royals” and Virgin lead single “What Was That.” Her latest headlining performance comes just a few weeks shy of the one-year anniversary of Virgin, which debuted at No. 2 on the Billboard 200 last summer — but while she’s spent the past several months on the Ultrasound World Tour in support of the project, this marked the first time she’s played a revamped festival version of the show.

“This is the most nervous I’ve been for a show in a while,” she confessed to the crowd midway through. “Partly because we’ve never done this show before, and partly because I’m obsessed with you, and I can’t even pretend that isn’t the case.”

The overall unvarnished, techy, raw-materials aesthetic of the show was still very much Virgin-coded, but all four of her albums got their moments throughout the night. Solar Power was the least represented, with Lorde playing only “Oceanic Feeling” from the project after running her hands through a drinking-water fountain. Live footage of her singing from creative angles captured by hidden and handheld cameras all over her stage projected on the big screens behind her during Pure Heroine classics such as “Buzzcut Season” and “Team” and Melodrama fan-favorites “Perfect Places,” “The Louvre” and “Liability.”

“Don’t you feel like so much has changed in the last nine years?” Lorde told the crowd before diving into the latter, reflecting on how she last played Gov Ball when she was promoting Melodrama. “To me, the world is unrecognizable compared to where we were in 2017 … There’s a loss of dignity that I feel. Our world feels increasingly unjust. And it feels harder and harder to arrive at your own definitions of beauty and truth and what is real. But I really feel this is real, all of us in this field.”

At that point, she urged fans to “show yourself” to the world, or in other words, let their real personalities “hang out.” “If we show ourselves — all the broken bits, all the jagged edges, all the filth — I really believe we will start f–king going somewhere,” she added earnestly.

Possibly the best two-song run of the set was “Man of the Year” followed by “Girl, So Confusing,” the 2024 Charli xcx remix that reunited the two pop savants after personal tensions divided them. (No, Charli did not make a cameo in NYC, with Lorde flying solo on their duet.) While the first track delves into Lorde’s embrace of masculinity, the second — which Lorde did not perform on the main Ultrasound trek — is all about her complicated relationship with femininity, making the pairing a perfect juxtaposition.

But by the end, Lorde made sure to turn the focus back on her audience. Her penultimate number was “David,” which she dedicated to “anyone who knows what it’s like to be under a boot.” As she sang, an enormous banner unfurled over the crowd for fans to hold onto together, literally unified under the mantra: “I don’t belong to anyone,” which big-screen footage from birds-eye cameras in the sky revealed to be printed on the fabric.

To close out the show, Lorde traveled to a B-stage deep in the crowd to belt out “Ribs,” far enough away from the stage for her to be able to turn around and watch her own fireworks go off in the background. “Look after each other,” she urged the audience in her final message of the night. “Let’s go Knicks.”

The musician will presumably continue playing the revamped show on her upcoming festival stops this summer, including All Things Go in Toronto on Sunday (June 7) and Mad Cool Festival in Spain, NOS Alive in Portugal and Festival de Nîmes in France in July. The first night of Gov Ball also featured sets from Baby Keem, KATSEYE and Pierce the Veil, with Stray Kids and A$AP Rocky set to headline Saturday and Sunday.

See Lorde’s setlist at the 2026 Governor’s Ball below.