The arts, music and culture festival Abandon Normal Devices will return from 25-27 September 2026 in Barnsley, Yorkshire.
The festival will take over the town for a weekend of art and installations featuring collaborations with a wide-spectrum of artists and creative technologists who “push the boundaries of immersive experiences,” says the festival.
Previous editions of the festival took place in Liverpool, Castleton, Peak District, and Grizedale, Lake District.
Tadeo Lopez-Sendon, Chief Executive for Abandon Normal Devices, said: “Since 2009, AND has transformed landscapes across the North into living laboratories for artistic and creative experimentation.
AND Festival 2021 took us on a journey responding to the Manchester Ship Canal and River Mersey, on docklands and on the water, featuring augmented reality seascapes, immersive voyages and floating bio-art labs, and expanded through an online programme of radical conversations.
In 2017, the festival reimagined the caves and valleys of the Peak District through sound, performance and ethereal visual landscapes, creating unique encounters that could only exist in those settings. AND Festival 2026 extends this legacy into Barnsley, uncovering the region’s hidden infrastructures and transforming them into shared spaces of imagination and encounters, tracing the arc from local stories and collective memory to future innovation.”
