The Cure revive 'Treasure' and 'In Your House' after 13 and 15 years

The Cure played 'Treasure' and 'In Your House' for the first time in over a decade at North Festival 2026, and the math is the point: 'Treasure' last appeared on a Cure setlist in 2013, while 'In Your House' hadn’t been played since 2011. That is a long time to keep fans guessing, then suddenly decide to pull two songs from the deepest shelf back into prime-time setlist territory.

Robert Smith and the band delivered it in Maia, Portugal on Sunday night (June 7), two nights after their return to the stage as headliners at Primavera Sound in Barcelona on Friday (June 5). The North Festival set wasn’t just a greatest-hits remix. It was a deliberate swap: tracks they did not play at Primavera suddenly showed up in Porto, including 'Treasure' from the 1996 album 'Wild Mood Swings' and 'In Your House' from 1980's goth-era foundation 'Seventeen Seconds.' In other words, they didn’t only headline. They rotated.

If you are used to thinking about live shows as fixed product, this is a reminder that concerts are closer to dynamic releases than static broadcasts. Primavera was a “thousands in attendance” moment, and NME notes it was enjoyed by Fontaines D.C.’s Grian Chatten. But at North Festival, The Cure changed the content mix. They also added other songs that did not make the cut at Primavera, including 'Want' and 'M.' That set-level flexibility matters because it changes what a fan feels they are buying: not just entry, but a specific, time-bound experience.

The 'In Your House' decision had extra surface area because it came with a full encore dedication to 'Seventeen Seconds.' NME reports they dedicated the entire first encore to that album, performing four songs back-to-back: 'In Your House,' 'M,' 'Play…' and the encore sequence referenced by footage circulating from the show. The headline return has a simple timeline, but the execution is more interesting: instead of reintroducing one track, they used the moment to frame an entire era. That is how you turn a “deep cut” into an “event” without needing a new album cycle.

The setlist in Portugal also shows how The Cure held the center while stretching the edges. Alongside the revived tracks, they played 'Alone,' 'Pictures Of You,' 'High,' 'A Night Like This,' 'Lovesong,' 'The Last Day Of Summer,' 'Burn,' 'Fascination Street,' 'alt.end,' 'Push,' 'Mint Car,' 'In Between Days,' 'Just Like Heaven,' 'Treasure,' 'Want,' 'From The Edge Of The Deep Green Sea,' 'Endsong,' 'In Your House,' 'M,' 'Play For Today,' 'A Forest,' 'Lullaby,' 'Wrong Number,' 'The Walk,' 'The Lovecats,' 'Friday I’m In Love,' 'Close To Me,' 'Why Can’t I Be You?,' 'Boys Don’t Cry.' That’s a lot of catalog continuity, but the two decade-revival songs are the story glue. They are the kind of selection that makes casual listeners go, “Wait, they did that?” and makes hardcore fans feel validated.

This all lands inside a bigger summer-and-tour machine. NME notes Smith joined Olivia Rodrigo during her surprise set at Primavera this weekend (June 6), debuting their new duet 'What’s Wrong With Me.' Rodrigo’s reaction was captured in the piece: she said, “I feel like I’m gonna cry,” and added, “I can’t believe that’s a thing that happened in the real world and not just a figment of my imagination.” That kind of cross-artist moment has a second-order effect on live audiences: it pulls new listeners toward the main act, while giving long-time fans an extra reason to pay attention.

After starting their 2026 summer UK and European tour, The Cure’s next stop is Friday night (June 12) at Nova Rock in Austria. NME also flags that these shows mark the band’s first time on stage together since their show at London’s Troxy last November, a gig in front of just 3,000 fans. The crowd included Billie Joe Armstrong of Green Day, Ed O’Brien of Radiohead, Boy George, Mogwai’s Stuart Braithwaite, and Pedro Pascal. That context is a useful reminder for executives and operators: demand can scale even when the venue size earlier in the year was relatively modest, and visibility from notable attendees can function like a credibility accelerant.

If you zoom out to what this means for boards, brand teams, and anyone tracking audience economics, the North Festival setlist swap is a compact case study. It suggests an audience is still willing to show up for both the familiar and the unexpected, especially when the unexpected is anchored to a real, time-stamped catalog history. And with Smith previously confirming another new album is “virtually finished,” plus a third new record also on the way, the band is clearly still running a creative backlog pipeline while actively managing how it surfaces in live demand. Their 2026 UK and Ireland headline shows listed by NME begin June 26 at Marlay Park in Dublin and June 28 at Belsonic in Belfast, followed by August 21 at Live From Wythenshawe Park in Manchester and August 23 at Edinburgh Summer Sessions, Royal Highland Showgrounds, Edinburgh.

Strategically, the stakes for peers in similar roles are straightforward: in crowded attention markets, “mixing up the setlist” is not trivia, it is positioning. The Cure proved they can change what fans expect within a classic framework, and do it in a way that creates repeatable narrative moments: decade-long absences brought back, era-focused encores, and catalog breadth delivered in one run.