Shambala

Shambala Line-Up: 80 new names including Paranoid London, CERN and Zack Polanski

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Fresh from its landmark transition to become the UK’s first employee-owned festival, Shambala Festival has shared a significant new wave of programming for its 2026 edition, featuring over 80 new artists including Paranoid London, Luke Vibert, K-Lone and Om Unit, plus blockbuster speakers such as Zack Polanski and a UK exclusive from world-leading laboratory, Cern Festival Programme & Big Bang Collective.

The newly announced artists blend festival stalwarts with emerging underground talent, global roots voices and cutting-edge names from the worlds of dance and electronic music. They join an already expansive music billing – featuring the likes of Bob Vylan, Goat, BCUC, Los Bitchos, Hollie Cook, The Selecter and Orchestra Baobab.

Stylistically diverse new additions include acid house heroes Paranoid London, acclaimed Welsh harpist Catrin Finch, London up-and-comer Summer Pearl, Egyptian-Australian multi-instrumentalist Joseph Tawadros, UK-Ghanaian duo Mina & Bryte, Birmingham’s “post-apocalyptic party band” Diddy Sweg, and vintage-tinged festival favourites Electric Swing Circus. 

A renowned late-night haunt, Shambala’s Enchanted Woods are set to rumble with DJ sets from genre-defying collective Ishmael Ensemble, afro-latin bass DJ Cal Jader, K-LONE (Wisdom Teeth), techno pioneer Luke Vibert and Bristol-based electronic legend Om Unit.

The 2026 edition also places a spotlight on co-curation and community, featuring a Decolonise Festival takeover with Bona Rays and steel. at the Rebel Soul venue, as well as the Ladies Bathroom Songwriters Takeover at the Hertz So Good youth-led venue. 

Other ones to watch include Drag Syndrome – an internationally acclaimed drag collective, featuring fierce and brilliant artists with Down syndrome – and Vespa Cougourdon Ourchestra, who promise a wild, anarchic and intoxicating show – complete with homemade gourd instruments.

True to Shambala’s radical roots, its 2026 Talks & Speakers offering is designed to fire up hearts, minds and spirits – with much of this year’s programme taking a close look at the current political landscape through a decidedly hopeful lens. Transition movement co-founder Rob Hopkins explores How To Fall in Love With the Future, while Green Party leader Zack Polanski hosts a live edition of his Bold Politics podcast.

Other highlights include a call to resistance from Led by Donkeys, who return after a packed-out talk in 2025, and a provocative look at sustainable eating in Deer Oh Deer Now What? – which picks up where the meat-free festival’s recent audience debate about introducing wild venison left off. 

In a major coup for 2026, the CERN Festival Programme and the Big Bang Collective also arrive at Shambala for a UK festival exclusive. This residency from the world-leading laboratory brings of-the-moment science and tech topics to the heart of the festival with four sessions across the weekend. 

Following last year’s sell-out show, tickets for 2026 are moving fast. Tier 1 and 2 tickets are now completely sold out across Adult, Elders and Young Adult ticket types, with limited Tier 3 Adult, Young Adult and Green Traveller tickets remaining.

To widen accessibility, Shambala has recently introduced new payment plans, allowing fans to secure tickets for an initial payment of under £30, with the remaining balance spread across weekly, fortnightly or monthly instalments until the summer. 

With its genre-defying line-up, commitment to inspiring positive change and deep-rooted community, 2026 is shaping up to be another unforgettable chapter in Shambala’s story.

For tickets, full line-up details and information, visit: https://www.shambalafestival.org/buy-tickets/ 

First UK festival goes employee-owned

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Kambe Events – the company behind pioneering independent festival Shambala – has today announced a landmark transition to employee ownership, becoming the first festival in the UK to adopt this model.

The move sees the festival’s original co-founders step away from ownership, ceding the business to the team members who have helped build it over more than two decades. 

The transition will see Shambala owned by an Employee Ownership Trust (EOT), helping to ensure that the festival will remain independent, and that its team will share in future successes. 

“All of us at Shambala have an emotional stake in what we have built over 25 years; now everyone has an ownership stake too,” explains Co-Founder and MD, Chris Johnson. “We would be nothing without our people, and they deserve to carry on the Shambala legacy as beneficiaries.“

This bold step comes at a time when many independent festivals are being acquired by major live entertainment conglomerates, marking a significant alternative path for the sector. By choosing employee ownership, Shambala is reinforcing its commitment to independence, sustainability and ethical stewardship.

“Shambala stands for independence and, in an increasingly commercialised festival scene, we simply could not sell to venture capitalists or the big promotion companies,” adds Johnson. “While exploring alternative paths, we fell in love with the Employee Ownership model.” 

While recent years have seen a rise in community ownership of independent venues and a growing number of employee-owned retailers, this transition represents a first for the UK festival industry – setting a new precedent for how live events businesses can evolve, while keeping their core values very much intact.

“It is patently clear that the current capitalist model is fundamentally broken,” adds Dan Raffety, Head of Music and another of the festival’s Co-Founders, who has led Kambe’s transition to EO. “As a society we must explore alternative models of ownership as a way through which the massive power and potential of capitalism can be focused on serving humanity and the planet at large.”

“Employee Ownership is just the next, natural step in Kambe’s adventures towards a utopia – the next phase in our constant evolution towards justice and a better world.”

The move continues a long-standing tradition of thought-leadership and innovation for Shambala. Over its 26-year history, the festival has been at the forefront of industry change, particularly in areas like sustainability and ethical operations. This latest development adds to a legacy defined by forward-thinking decisions and a willingness to challenge the status quo.

By placing ownership in the hands of its employees, the festival is ensuring that its founding ethos – creativity, sustainability, independence and community – remains protected for years to come. 

Shambala Announces Fresh Wave of 70+ Artists for its 2026 Line-up

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Shambala Festival has today announced a huge new batch of over 70 artists for its 2026 edition, adding even more colour, creativity and left-field brilliance to what is already shaping up to be the festival’s most ambitious line-up to date.

Newly confirmed names include Reggie Watts, the whirlwind of surreal beatboxing, improvised comedy and musical mischief, plus Senegal’s iconic masters of hypnotic Afro-Latin groove, Orchestra Baobab, as well as a brass-fuelled explosion of jazz, funk and afrobeat from Nubiyan Twist.

Also joining the party are sun-drenched psychedelia queens Los Bitchos, bass-heavy Bristol firestarter Grove, and jazz drummer Sarathy Korwar alongside Jamz Supernova, Prima Queen, Avalanche Kaito, Sababa 5, Joshua Burnside, Lisa Knapp & Gerry Diver, Malin Lewis, Waldo’s Gift and many more – spanning global grooves, boundary-pushing electronics, folk, funk, soul and joyful voyages of musical discovery. These additions bolster the festival’s already stellar musical line-up, which includes the likes of Bob Vylan, Hollie Cook, Goat (UK festival exclusive), and Emma-Jean Thackray.

True to Shambala’s fiercely independent spirit, the festival continues to put its community at the heart of decision-making. This year, after a decade of being meat- and fish-free, the question of reintroducing meat – solely in the form of sustainable, locally sourced wild venison – has been put to an audience vote, inviting Shambalans to decide whether it should feature on the menu in 2026. 

Shambala removed meat and fish from its menus back in 2016 to spark conversation about the wider impacts of what we eat on climate, ecosystems and communities – a move that helped shift habits and cut food-related emissions to just 6% of the festival’s total, compared with an average of 21% at UK music festivals. Now, this radical rethink comes in response to record-high deer populations across the UK. With overgrazing known to be damaging woodlands, wetlands and biodiversity in the absence of natural predators, Shambala is once again reopening the debate – and asking what truly sustainable eating looks like in 2026.

Shambala MD and Co-Founder Chris Johnson explains: 
“In 2016 we shocked the festival world, and some of our audience, by taking meat and fish off the menu. We did this to reduce environmental impacts, and also to spark debate. It feels time to reinvigorate these important conversations, and also to highlight that we urgently need to eat wild deer to rescue and protect what little is left of our natural habitats.”

The debate is now open to the audience and the results will be shared in early March.  

As ever, Shambala’s stages will be bursting with far more than just music. For 2026, the festival is unveiling a brand new Spiegeltent, set to become a dazzling new home for live circus, cabaret and theatrical spectacles. Festival goers can expect kids’ cabaret and family rave-ups, aerial circus swooping overhead, and genre-smashing bands & DJs – curated by Bristol-based interactive theatre legends Compass Presents, and delivered with a distinctly Shambalan twist.

Other much-loved participatory moments are already locked in for 2026, including the Saturday carnival, which sees the whole festival transformed with creative costumes based around a different theme each year. In 2026 festival goers will put their own novel interpretations on the theme ‘Lyrical Genius’. In a similar vein, Flamboyant Friday has Shambalans all commit to dressing in one colour for the day. This year the Shambalans voted to transform the festival crowd into a vibrant sea of purple.

Following last year’s sell-out, Shambala 2026 is filling up fast. Tier 1 Adult, Tier 2 Adult and Tier 1 Young Adult tickets are sold out, with Tier 3 Adult Weekend and Green Traveller tickets now selling fast. To meet significant demand for young persons’ tickets, a very limited new Tier 2 Young Adult ticket has also been just released at £255, with flexible three and five month payment plans available for all ticket types. 

With its genre-defying line-up, commitment to off-the-wall silliness  and deep-rooted community, 2026 is shaping up to be another unforgettable chapter in Shambala’s story.

For tickets and more information, visit shambalafestival.org/buy-tickets/

Shambala joins forces with Tree Aid

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Every year the Sahara desert grows by 270,000 square km – that’s an area the size of New Zealand stripped of trees every single year. Despite the creeping sand more than 350million people live on the southern fringes of this desert in a daily battle to survive. This is where TREE AID works, and why Shambala Festival-goers have chosen to join TREE AID’s Tree Revolution, to help plant and protect 1 million trees in 2011.

 
Each year Shambala reduces even more of the environmental impact of their small and lively festival, including offering their visitors the chance to offset the carbon they create by travelling to and from the festival. This year, TREE AID was one of three organisations put to the carbon vote – and 47% of punters chose to join TREE AID’s Tree Revolution by donating £1907 to help rural families in Africa’s drylands to plant and protect trees. 
 
A fun-filled four days of creativity, music, theatre and cabaret all topped off with mouth watering food from around the globe, Shambala also has an eco focus. Having recently been the first ever festival to win the maximum 3 stars in the Industry Green Award, Shambala is officially the UK’s greenest festival, and since 2010 Shambala have reduced their carbon footprint per person by 50%, making them the ideal festival to team up with TREE AID to help some of the poorest people in the world cope with to the increasing effects of climate change. 
 
Especially because for African families living in the drylands, trees do more than just absorb carbon. Trees mean shade from the searing 40ºC heat of the West African sun. Trees mean food for families when other crops fail. Trees mean a poor woman can lift her family out of poverty by selling tree products like shea butter, dried mango and honey.  Trees mean families can stay together, that children can go to school and that teenagers are not driven to find dangerous work in the city slums.
 
Ultimately, trees mean life. For families in Africa, as well as for families here in the UK.
 
This year’s Shambala Festival is once again set to be full of unexpected surprises, with ticket holders being asked to vote for the bands they want to play over the weekend, plus the legendary Saturday night fancy dress carnival – all 99% powered by solar, wind and recycled veggie oil! You can find out more about TREE AID’s Tree Revolution at the Festival, or at www.treerevolution.org.uk.
 
It costs £1 for a family to plant a tree in Africa. Join the Tree Revolution today: text TREES to 81400 to donate £3 and plant 3 trees.