Leeds Festival 2026: what it's really like

Sorry festival fans, honest review incoming. Reading and Leeds are not good festivals. But there's hope in that message, if you read on!

The TicketSquad team visited Leeds festival this year, on a day ticket for Saturday. Having previously camped at Reading and Leeds, that just wasn't on our agenda this year, for reasons that will follow. But we did dip in for a check in on how the festival has changed since our last visit so many years ago.

We are admittedly not the target audience for Leeds. The crowd was a lot younger than us. We get it - if it's your first festival or your local festival, Reading or Leeds can appeal. If you want a crowd your own age group (and you are 18-25), then maybe that makes sense. What we'd like to offer, as a group of - shall we say... more experienced festival goers, that these are two of the worst festivals out there. By all means break your cherry there but please don't write off festivals in general if you don't have a great time. They simply aren't representative of the UK, or European, or global festival scenes.

The line up: top 10 most popular artists, on shuffle: in a random order on each of a small number of stages with low production values and budgets. If it's popular it might be on but expect massive crowd turnover between sets, long breaks between sets, because nothing blends or matches in any reasonable sense of order a wedding DJ couldn't beat.

The ticket prices: not competitive or good value based on what is on offer. Very commercial vibe - sell sell sell and bring in the corporate sponsors wherever possible.

The camping: just feral, honestly. >50% tent abandonment rates, attendees setting their campsites on fire on Sunday. Basically, like the end of days, crossed with Apocalypse Now and Lord of the Flies. Be afraid, and a little bit disgusted of some of the scenes you will witness.

The food options: average, and expect long queues between sets on the main stage. Very long queues!

The organisation: 2026 actually managed to be a low point in decades of meh. Due to poor planning, organisation and logistics, the event closed the new "warehouse" EDM tent all of saturday and most of sunday due to "overcrowding", at short notice, with no replacement - leaving artists who were already there without a venue, and fans missing hours of music they may well have turned up specifically to see. They created an indoor venue with a fixed capacity and put in place no way to manage capacity. I don't know where their years of experience running these events went, but it wasn't into those arrangements.

The crowd: "my first festival" mainly - pretty rough, disrespectful of other attendees and showing little respect for their environment.