FestIndex, a free digital platform for tracking festival trends, has launched to “help festivals navigate the rapidly changing marketing landscape” says the company.
FestIndex gives organisers free performance analysis tools to uncover industry-wide marketing trends, utilising a data pool of 508 festivals across 44 countries and 27 languages.
FestIndex’s first publicly available analysis has claimed that just 50 of the 423 festivals analysed so far in 2026 generated 63% of the market’s total online engagement.
Publishing frequency is a major factor in this, says FestIndex. These 50 festivals averaged at least 15 posts a day on their busiest platform during an event and the five days afterwards. This, says FestIndex, suggests that more frequent publishing equals substantially more engagement.
FestIndex says it analyses content published on official festival Instagram and TikTok accounts during a Peak Attention Window (PAW), which is a festival’s show days plus five days after its final performance.
FestIndex measures publishing frequency, video views, likes, comments, shares, saves, engagement rates and audience sentiment. All festivals are then given a score based on this real-time social engagement
Steve Jenner, FestIndex founder, said: “We’ve observed a strong pattern between the attention and engagement festivals generate on Instagram and TikTok while they’re happening, and how quickly tickets sell for the following edition.
But most festivals are flying blind. They know their own numbers, but have very little idea whether they’re actually decent, how they compare with similar festivals, or what the best performers are doing differently. That’s what we built FestIndex to make visible.
The aim is to give festival teams free access to evidence that helps them navigate this shift, while bringing new insights to light that can benefit the entire industry.”
FestIndex is a free platform which offers Pro access, which is available to sign up to now.
