Is the festival industry healing? Even Slightly.

“Live events are dead. Venues are closing. Festivals are stopping. The industry is rotting around us.” And for a long time, that felt true. It still does, depending on where you’re standing.

Since the pandemic, hundreds of UK grassroots venues have shut their doors, and festivals have fallen with them. Small and mid-sized festivals vanished from the calendar almost overnight,  not for lack of love, but because the maths stopped working. Costs rose faster than ticket prices ever could. Production, staffing, licensing, Energy bills spiked. Business rates returned. Audiences became more selective, out of survival. For many promoters, putting on a festival,  or even a single club night,  stopped being a passion project and started feeling like financial self-harm.

So when people say the industry is broken, they’re not wrong. But I’m not convinced that’s the full picture anymore.

Because heading into 2026, I’ve personally seen more new festivals announced than I have in a long time, and not in a flashy, corporate way. Small ones. Weird ones. Ones run by people who know the risks and are choosing to do it anyway. Promoters and artists are stepping into festival organising because it feels necessary. Because if nobody builds the spaces, there won’t be any left to exist in.

Something feels like it’s shifted, not dramatically, not safely,  but enough to notice.

Singularity, deeply respected London promoters with a heavy free-party influence, announced Ground Rules: a three-day festival on the old site of the iconic Illusive Festival in Northampton. Lukas Wigflex and Dr Banana launched PEEP in Devon. Playful, intentional, rooted in the community they’ve spent years curating. Sarum Point, a new small festival emerging from the combined brains of different projects scattered across the country. Or An Experience Festival, going into their 2nd year, being completely transparent on the risks and financial burden the first festival had on them.  None of these feel like cash grabs, they feel authentic and necessary.

I don’t think the industry is “back”. I don’t think it’s healed. Too many scars remain for that language to feel honest. But I do think we’re seeing something like adaptation. Smaller ideas. Tighter lineups. Fewer excesses. More intention. A quiet refusal to stop.

Maybe the healing isn’t loud. Maybe it’s just people still trying.

And right now, that really feels like something.