As reliably as day turns to night, it seems with each passing week comes the expected news that at least one UK music festival has shuttered its doors.
This week, that comes in the celebration of LGBTQ+ culture that is Manchester Pride, alongside the Hertfordshire-based Standon Calling. Over the past seven days, both festivals have entered liquidation.
There are some circumstantial differences in to how both festivals ended, at least for now. As reported by the BBC, “after 17 Standon Callings the 2023 Standon Calling will now prove to have been the last,” the festival said. The news came after the festival had previously promised to return as an eight-day event as recently as September.
The festival, which began as a ‘house party’ in 2001 before becoming something more official in 2006, was founded by Alex Trenchard in the grounds of his family home at Standon Lordship. It’s not your average terraced house, but it made for a stellar festival site.
But the history of Standon Calling is a somewhat muddied one. The festival was a much beloved summer favourite for thousands, something owed to the intimate, house party atmosphere it harboured over 19 years.
In 2011 however, Alex was jailed for 30 months for “using his company credit card to defraud Tesco out of £355,000,” in an effort to “pay off debts incurred by a musical festival at the family seat, Standon Lordship in Hertfordshire,” said the BBC at the time.
Standon Calling’s last festival outing was in 2023, but failed to host its event in both 2024 and 2025. In 2024, it was also claimed that some performers and food vendors were still owed money from the festival’s 2023 event.
Manchester Pride is arguably a bigger, more culturally impactful failing. Last week, we reported that the company entered voluntary liquidation due to a “combination of rising costs and declining ticket sales.” The charity behind the yearly celebration also claimed that a failed bid to host the pan-European international LGBTI event EuroPride “led to the organisation no longer being financially viable.”
Many performers and vendors are allegedly still chasing payment from its 2025 event, which takes over large swathes of Manchester’s Canal Street and beyond. This led the performing arts and entertainment trade union organisation Equity to demand via a petition that Manchester Pride “pay Manchester Pride workers what they’re owed,” and went on to say that “Manchester has the capacity to build back a community focused Pride event which the people of the city deserve.”
It’s not a secret that countless festivals are struggling to handle the finances needed to host a music festival. Everything costs more than the year before, and will likely cost more in 2026. But at the same time, artists, vendors, staff and audiences have long been the ones who foot the bill when things go awry.
Challenges will always exist for the UK festival industry, but there’s a responsibility for festivals to rise to those challenges in a way that doesn’t hurt those whose work they rely on. Artists, staff and vendors deserve to be paid. For punters, with each ticket sale comes an expectation to deliver, or at the bare minimum provide refunds if you can’t. These are basic expectations, but ones that aren’t being met.
While Standon Calling was a more typical, ‘rave in a field’ kind of weekender, entities such as Manchester Pride are far more than a music festival. These places are vital cultural and community hubs for millions, and are spaces that offer true self-expression. With that comes a greater, more inherent responsibility to deliver. However, according to Manchester Mill, “reckless spending decisions” are partly to blame for the downfall of Manchester Pride. “Winning EuroPride had become a last roll of the dice,” says Manchester Mill.
To gamble the future of a longstanding institution for LGBTQ+ people on a wish and a prayer is not only misguided, but also incompetent. To partly address these matters with a sentence that reads “we are sincerely sorry for those who will now lose out financially from the current situation,” while adding that its staff team have been made redundant, simply adds salt to the wound for many.
It’s easy for me to say that tackling these issues is simple. The festival industry is a complex one with many moving parts. But far too many festivals seem to shift the blame of its own mishandling to others. It takes investigative reporters, such as those at Manchester Mill, to unearth internal problems that left performers out of pocket. Meanwhile, an official statement from Manchester Pride owed some of its failings to ‘low ticket sales’.
Going into 2026, festival-goers are increasingly being forced to choose between heating their homes or heading to a field for three days of music. It’s on organisers to do better to earn their money by delivering on their own promises. Communities aren’t there to be tapped into as a way to increase sales, only to be then blamed for not purchase enough VIP packages to keep an event afloat.
There is a glimmer of hope, though. In a cursed way, this perhaps proves that buildinig a successful festival remain the same as they’ve ever been, even in difficult times. Build it, they will come, treat them with respect, but most importantly, pay them.
