Bristol's Festival Scene

Bristol festivals draw huge crowds year on year - from commercially run events like Tokyo World Festival in Eastville park to free (and community minded) events like Trinity Garden Party and St. Paul's carnival. There are a string of multi-venue festivals (in the style of Sonar in Barcelona) around the Stokes Croft area including Simple Things and Rave on Avon. Simple Things has expanded somewhat in the last few years and taken over the city's flagship venue, Colston Hall.

As well as music festivals, Bristol's deep historical connection to street art is celebrated in day events like Upfest. Centred around the recently created (and unofficial) street art district - North Street - you can spend the day watching apartment blocks getting a new lick of paint from head to toe. Truly a festival not to be missed!

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Our recent festival recommendations

Free entry / PWYC! A local wellspring of evidence-based drug use support, BDP host a round table discussion on harm-reduction at the peak of festival season. Whether you want advice on addiction or just an idea of what else is actually IN that white powder, this session will offer an essential grounding in how to be a better friend, ally and club warrior too. Oin us to explore nightlife and festival culture with four specialists in the harm reduction field.

Trinity invite you into the beating industrial heart of Jacob Wells Baths in a tantalising taste of its full arts hub resurrection. Marvel at the Victorian splendour of this iconic and underused space, utterly transformed by immersive AV visionaries Squidsoup into a vast, responsive environment of shifting lights and soothing soundscapes. An immersive light and sound experience in a repurposed Victorian swimming baths

Sell out warning! A bite-sized blast of women’s micro-fiction to warm you up for this year’s Flash Fiction Festival. East Bristol Books brings together a selection of award-winning, razor-sharp flash storytellers from across the globe – Bristol’s own Kathryn Aldridge-Morris, WA’s Gillian O’Shaughnessy and the Bay Area’s Patricia Q. Bidar. Feminist flash fiction by authors from the UK & Australia

What our editors say

“Halloween is usually regarded as the creepiest festival of the modern year. A celebration of witchcraft, phantoms and images of fear coming down to us from a remote and murky pagan past. But how old and how pagan is Halloween really? Was it the ancient pagan feast of the dead, or the Celtic New Year? What role does it play in the modern world, and should it still be celebrated? Join us for a delightfully spooky evening as Professor Ronald Hutton answers all this and more about the much-loved and much-misunderstood festival.”
From: Talk: The History of Halloween