The Big Feastival 2026 Review

Whilst I’d like to think I am in the first flushes of my youth; the fact is that many might see me as a bit of a festival veteran. I’ve been attending festivals for nearly thirty years, albeit with a few fallow years around bringing up our little children. Even so, I’ve only tasted a tiny bit of what the UK festival scene has to offer, so I was excited to sample the wares of a new (to me) event, in the form of The Big Feastival. The Big Feastival is a festival held in The Cotswolds, on the 200 acre farm belonging to blur bassist, Alex James. Folding together the worlds of music and food, the Big Feastival hosts a variety of stages, some providing traditional music festival fare, and some where audiences gather to watch big names from the world of food work their magic with a saucepan, or an oven, or a barbecue, or in one case, with a contraption that looked like a big reflective satellite dish and used the power of the sun to reach ridiculously high cooking temperatures.

There have been some interesting takes, shared online this summer, about the changing nature of festivals. One piece, reviewing Kendal Calling 2026 (see here), went as far as to suggest that there was a need for festivals to narrow their target audience and those that they cater for. Essentially the argument goes that there are two sorts of festival goers- families who want to sit on chairs and camp out at a stage for a while, and those who have come to be totally immersed in the party; festival organisers can’t please both camps, so they need to choose one or the other. It’s easy to have sympathy for this viewpoint; having tried many times to make my way through a crowd to find a decent view, only to find my way blocked by a toddler wagon, or by a picnic blanket being protected by its owners but not actually having anything/anyone on it.

The Big Feastival has, in many ways, gone with this point of view, and has chosen to cater to the audience who want to sit, relax, eat, drink, and enjoy the festival atmosphere. In the mainstage arena, the area front of the mixing desk is for dancing, and behind there is a sea of camping chairs, picnic blankets and prosecco. The result is that, for most of the day, most of the audience is a very long way from the artists, apart from a couple of hundred standing at the front. It must be difficult to find the energy for a show when there’s so much space between the band and the audience, but nonetheless there were amazing performances from bands playing earlier in the day. Rosadocs brought their usual charm and youthful energy, Red Rum Club, White Lies and Ordinary Boys put in a shift despite playing a smaller crowd than they might be used to, and Mimi Webb, Tors and Meek enchanted those who came to watch them. By the time the sub-headliners were on though, the dancing area began to get pretty full- so it began to feel like more of a party. Even here though, there was some conflict as things became a little more boisterous: “what’s the matter, you never been to a gig before?” asked a young lad, whose dancing had presumably invaded the personal space of another audience member, who was making their feelings known.

As for the headline acts? Basement Jaxx have to be the standout performance of the weekend, blending contemporary dance, drama, stage design, lighting, heavy beats and those iconic tunes, they provided an absolute banquet of bangers. Mike Skinner and The Streets performed their iconic 2004 concept album, ‘A Grand Don’t Come for Free’ with a greatest hits selection at the end. Were it not for Basement Jaxx the night before, this beautifully poignant adaptation of the album would have stood out even more, but it was certainly one of the highlights for me. Bastille closed the mainstage with another very visual set, particularly as they had so many audio difficulties, but when they finished with 'Happier', followed by 'Pompeii', it was a beautiful way to close the festival.

I remember hearing people bemoan the commercialisation of Glastonbury before the ‘Ring of Steel’ security, which ensured people had to <gasp> pay for a ticket before they gained entry. Thousands of people were attending, who had climbed over a fence, burrowed under it, used dodgy tickets, or used any of a number of other nefarious methods to get in, but even then people were feeling uneasy about the changing scene. There has always been a narrative bemoaning the fact that people are being priced out of attending, that festivals have got more bougee, that things aren’t the same as they used to be. And they might be right. The thing that remains for me however, is the one thing that keeps me coming back to festivals, the sense of community and camaraderie. As the wind and rain battered (and nearly drowned) us in the wet years at Glastonbury, we were all in it together. As the bands strode onto stages across the country, as we gazed up at them through rain-soaked eyelashes, as we bounced in unison and the steam rose off the crowd, we were all in it together. And that’s what hasn’t changed, that’s why we still go to festivals, to gather with our tribe and to meet new tribes, and to experience music, food, drink, fun and (without wishing to sound too flower power) love, together. Don’t polarise audiences, let’s just all try to be more tolerant… man.

Review - Jon Stokes