60 UK festivals have now announced a postponement, cancellation or complete closure in 2024.
Perhaps most striking among the most recent, Secret Garden Party (Cambridgeshire) announced that this year will be its last, burning its main stage at the end of its July weekend as a symbol of the challenges facing independent festivals.
Cosmic Roots Festival (Basingstoke) and Witcombe Festival (Gloucester) are also among those that have cancelled 2024 events citing rising costs among the reasons for the decision.
Without intervention, it’s expected that the UK will see over 100 festivals disappear in 2024 due to the pressures of unpredictable and rising costs.
With 96 events lost to Covid, 36 in 2023 and 60 to date in 2024, the total number of UK festivals to have disappeared since 2019 is 192.
Without having had successive steady seasons since the pandemic in which to recover, the country’s festivals are under more financial strain than ever.
At the start of February, The AIF launched a new campaign asking for a temporary VAT reduction on festival tickets that would save many event promoters from closure.
The 5% For Festivals campaign is an awareness campaign that seeks to inform festival-goers about the problems that music festival promoters have faced over the last five years, encouraging them to contact their MPs to lobby for a much needed VAT reduction on tickets. That campaign is paused whilst the country prepares to elect a new Government.
Temporary support from the UK Government – lowering VAT from 20% to 5% on ticket sales for the next three years – is what is needed to give festival promoters the space they need to rebuild.
The full list of lost festivals in 2024 can be found here.
AIF CEO John Rostron said: “The number of festivals forced to cancel, postpone or shut down entirely in 2024, largely because of unpredictable costs and a credit crunch within the sector, shows no signs of slowing. The urgent need for government intervention through a temporary reduction in VAT on ticket sales to 5% remains. We hope that the new Labour government will take swift action to save many successful festival businesses that are facing this existential threat.”
