Boomtown (festival)

Boomtown (also known as Boomtown Fair) is a five-day theatre and music festival held annually on the Matterley Estate in South Downs National Park, near Winchester, Hampshire, England. It was first held in 2009 and has been held at its current site since 2011. The event runs in the second week of August each year, and features a diverse lineup of live bands, electronic music DJs, speakers, and other performers across a wide range of genres.

Boomtown takes place on 1,250 acres of farmland, and consists of 8 districts of a fictional city, alongside camping, workshop, and activist areas. Each district has a distinct identity and is constructed with life-sized street sets, housing more than 50 hidden venues run by independent collectives and record labels, with some resembling typical amenities including a post office, hotel, and police station. The 12 large main stages are run by Boomtown, and several stages are situated within woodland, with permanent wooden staging, bars, and walkway structures. The large scale of the build and its infrastructure requires six weeks of construction, and a month of disassembly.

In addition to music, each edition of the festival features heavy immersive theatre elements, expanding on an overarching narrative through a large alternate reality game, and serving as social commentary. Attendees can interact with actors portraying citizens of the fictional city and obtain copies of the festival’s in-universe newspaper, The Daily Rag, which is published throughout the event. The storyline climaxes in the festival’s closing ceremony on Sunday night. Previous years have included themes of artificial intelligence, media manipulation, political corruption, and the environment.

At 2024, the festival has a capacity of 49,000 ticket holders (including 1,000 free tickets for local residents), as well as 17,999 crew. In renewing their planning permission, the festival has applied to the South Downs National Park Authorityto increase their permitted capacity to be inline with their current licence capacity of 76,999 from Winchester City Council.