The Reading Leeds Festival 2026

This year's festival is over the August bank holiday weekend (Aug 27-30)

This festival has changed its music focus and its venues over time but it is one of the major music festivals in the UK today.  It started as a national jazz festival in 1961 by Harold Pendleton and was held in the London Borough of Richmond's Athletic Ground. The focus changed to rhythm and blues later in the 1960's.  As they had acts such as the Who and the Rolling Stones, the festival became more and more important and well known.  The name was changed to the National Jazz and Blues Festival. 
The festival moved to other venues around London such as Windsor Racecourse, Kempton Park and Plumpton, East Sussex.  

The first Reading Festival was in 1971.  Rory Gallagher played that year. During the 1970's, the Reading Festival was synonymous with a serious rock festival.  The festival went from strength to strength during the 1980's when hard rock and heavy metal bands started to take part such as Iron Maiden and Black Sabbath.  There was no festival in 1985 as Reading Council refused permission due to noise complaints. But it continued in 1986 to everyone's relief.

In 1988, a new organization came in to book the bands (the Mean Fiddler organization).  The focus changed again to indie, alternative rock, punk, goth and emerging new music. The main standout band of the 1990's was Nirvana in 1992.  Kurt Cobain's attendance made this one of the most famous festivals at that time.

The 1990's saw this Festival as the one where new bands had a breakthrough such as Radiohead, the Red Hot Chili Peppers and Smashing Pumpkins.

In 1999 this festival added an additional venue.  It was decided that the Reading Festival was becoming too big and it was decided to add a venue in the north of England.  Since then, this Festival has been at two sites at the same time.  Last year, there were 180,000 people at the 2 sites - 105,000 in Reading and 75,000 in Leeds.  Many people camp out for the duration of the festival and arrive 1 or 2 days early to set up.  The festival usually has younger festival goers than at Glastonbury Festival.

In the 2000's, this festival became a mainstream festival and a broader mix of musical styles. Now there is hip-hop, pop, electronic music and alternative music.  They have 6 headline performances across the weekend.  Sometimes, there is an unknown band such as the Arctic Monkeys were in 2005.  And there have also been major stars such as Kendrick Lamar and Stormzy.  Today it is organized by Festival Republic.

For tickets go to:

www.leedsfestival.com (with options to camp or not, certain days only etc)
www.readingfestival.com (with the same options but the only tickets left are single day tickets for Friday, Saturday and Sunday)