Boomtown will return to Matterley Estate from 11th to 15th August 2027 for Chapter 6: Wild Style, with tickets on sale now. The dates follow the festival’s biggest edition yet, as 77,000 citizens filled the South Downs National Park from 12th to 16th August 2026 for Chapter Five: Radical Redesign.
The 17th edition was built around discovery. Skrillex made his Boomtown headline debut on the new 20,000-capacity HYDRO XL stage, bringing out Flowdan and then Chase & Status as surprise guests for their first live collaboration, playing unreleased music in the closing hours of Sunday. The Lion’s Den roared back in Temple Valley, Green Party leader Zack Polanski made a surprise return to introduce Scissor Sisters, and a drone show above HYDRO XL sent BBXL™’s controversial space programme blasting towards Mars.
Radical Redesign stretched the city back across the hills, valleys, amphitheatres and woodlands of its Hampshire home, reimagined around six districts, 12 main stages, more than 50 hidden venues and thousands of musicians, actors, performers, artists, makers and creatives. After unveiling a diverse 2026 bill last autumn, the festival spent five days colliding electronic music, live bands, hip hop, punk, ska, reggae, pop, techno, house, drum & bass, jungle and the global underground with immersive theatre, live science and sustainability projects. It was also named the best value festival during the build up.
Chapter Six asks where Boomtown goes once the rules have been rewritten. Tickets for Wild Style, running Wednesday 11th to Sunday 15th August 2027 at Matterley Estate, are on sale at boomtownfair.co.uk.
HYDRO XL was the weekend’s flagship statement as well as its Sunday closer. Scaled up from the 8,000-capacity HYDRO stage introduced in 2025, the green hydrogen fuel-cell arena delivered sound, lighting, video and production with pure water and heat as the only byproduct. Groove Armada opened it on Friday afternoon, before DJ EZ, Notion, 999999999, Oguz, Folamour, VTSS, Marlon Hoffstadt, SHERELLE, KILIMANJARO B2B Oppidan and Eats Everything B2B TSHA. Saturday ran from Floating Points (Live) into Four Tet, then Brutalismus 3000 and Azyr, before Skrillex shut the city down.
The Lion’s Den’s return to its Temple Valley amphitheatre, four years after it last stood there, gave live music and soundsystem culture a natural bowl to fill. Madness opened the stage on Friday, a decade on from their last Boomtown appearance. Gentleman’s Dub Club brought out General Levy, Kneecap packed the valley that night, and Saturday swung from drum & bass takeovers into Shaggy, Scooter, Alix Perez, Andy C and A.M.C. Sunday put Faithless, FCUKERS, Vengaboys and Eve on the same bill. Polanski, who acted at Boomtown before frontline politics, then walked out to introduce Scissor Sisters.
Grand Central kept the brief of a city without genre boundaries. Kae Tempest, High Vis and L’Entourloop led Friday, Saturday ran through Hak Baker, Rose Gray, Antony Szmierek, Sampa The Great, Princess Nokia, Ashnikko and Peaches, and Sunday turned alternative with Less Than Jake and Skindred. In the woods, Zero packed Hidden Woods with dubstep and Irah overflowed Tangled Roots with jungle, a reminder that finding an unmarked room still matters as much as clocking a headliner.
The rest of the redesign treated the 77,000-strong city as infrastructure, laboratory and story at once. Agents of Change, the Eco Bond, the Repairium, Energy Garden and the Cloak of Hope folded sustainability into the site itself. New for 2026, The Observatory, led by Dr Martha Newson, brought UK university researchers into the city for live studies on identity, belonging, neurodivergence and collective behaviour. Boomtown Unboxed turned each citizen’s path through the app, Quest Portal and venues into a personalised festival film, while Changemaker Cards, a research challenge with Amplify, Monks, the University of Surrey, Royal Holloway and the UKRI Centre for Doctoral Training in AI for Digital Media Inclusion, tracked kindness as it moved from person to person.
Chapter Five’s story put The Network in charge of redesigning the city, then brought back Mr Biga and Aurora Venturestone under BBXL™, who declared Earth a “single-use planet” and drained Boomtown to fund a trip elsewhere. On Sunday night, tens of thousands watched a choreographed drone display as a rocket left HYDRO XL for Mars. Co-founder Luke Mitchell called Radical Redesign “probably the biggest leap we’ve taken with Boomtown for many years,” adding that the point is what leaves the gates: “If even a little of that openness, imagination and connection leaves the gates with us, then Boomtown can have an impact far beyond these fields.” Chapter 6: Wild Style is next.
Image credits: Sian Herbert, Hubble Photo, Eljay Briss
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