The Cure frontman follows Roger Daltrey, who stepped down in 2024 after helming curation duties at the charity for 24 years
The charity organization Teenage Cancer Trust will continue its long-running series of benefit concerts in 2026 with a lineup curated by the Cure‘s Robert Smith. The musician takes over the role from co-founder Roger Daltrey, who stepped down last year after helming curation duties for 24 years.
“Teenage Cancer Trust does the most fantastic work, and it is a great honor — and a real thrill — to be asked to curate the 2026 shows at the Royal Albert Hall,” Smith shared in a statement. “I can promise it will be a very memorable week!”
Past iterations of the event have featured performances from the Who, Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds, Squeeze, the Chemical Brothers, Oasis, Coldplay, Jimmy Page and Robert Plant, Eric Clapton, the Cure, Madness, the Stereophonics, and more.
“With The Cure’s long and outstanding support for Teenage Cancer Trust, Robert appreciates the vital work this charity does,” Daltrey said. “The concerts have become an essential fixture in the music calendar, featuring some of the world’s greatest artists. It has been a challenge to find the right person to take them on — but Robert, a true musical great, is the perfect curator for the 2026 concerts.”
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The Teenage Cancer Trust provides funding to specialized nurses, youth workers, and hospital units in the National Health Service to support young people who have received cancer diagnoses. Since 2000, Daltrey has helped the organization raise over $40 million.
In 2013, Daltrey told Rolling Stone the central mission of the Teenage Cancer Trust “has nothing to do with medicine, but the fact that people want to be with other people of their same age. I don’t know what a 13-year-old has in common with a 39-year-old apart from the fact they both breathe. It’s a totally different period of your life. It’s a shame that the medical profession doesn’t realize that being comfortable psychologically by being with your own age group has an enormous effect on how people survive treatment.”
