Shambala 2026
It’s clear from the first moments — chatting to regular attendees on the shuttle bus, to the volunteers and staff onsite — that Shambala must currently be the friendliest place in the UK. Everywhere you look are smiling faces and a sea of sequins, face paint, fairy lights, bubble guns and conga lines — rarely has a queue for compost toilets look so glamorous.
This friendliness even goes as far as the venues’ schedules. They don’t just begin for the weekend, they welcome you. From the crowd joining in with the opening ceremony of the anarchic Shambolympics to the unifying, bass-heavy welcome in Back a Yard, with DJ Costa and Inda Flo getting the crowd warmed up for the weekend.
Sibín Beag invites everyone to share a drink at their Fáilte Isteach (Welcome In). The venue is kitted out as a genuine Irish pub, including a TV showing RTÉ. The house band play saxophone-powered reels and ask the crowd to raise their glasses to the recently departed Dolly Parton and Tim Curry, playing a mash-up of ‘Jolene’ and ‘The Time Warp’ (not the last time either will be played this weekend).
The highlight of Thursday is Drag Syndrome, a collective of drag performers with Down’s Syndrome. They demolish preconceptions through fierce, funny and moving lip-syncs and ending, fittingly, on Lady Gaga’s ‘Born This Way’.
Each ‘Flamboyant Friday’ at Shambala, attendees are encouraged to all wear a specific colour — this year it’s purple, with a flashmob dance to ‘Start Wearing Purple’ by Gogol Bordello. This gets everyone gently into the collective spirit and carries on throughout the festival, lending the whole weekend a distinct hue.
The acts on the main Solsasta stage carry on this communal mindset. Grace Petrie delivers a set of her trademark socialist protest-folk and Joshua Idehen asks the crowd to shimmy off their worries together on the dancefloor, an instruction they carry into the rest of the weekend. His mantra “depression cannot hit a moving target” could easily be the motto of Shambala.
O. call for a more visceral kind of movement in the treehouse of the Enchanted Woods stage. Their frantic drums and abrasive baritone saxophone squawks get the crowd moshing across the forest floor.
The feel-good vibes continue at Roots Corner, which has a distinctly tropical flavour on Friday, with DJ Chicha Morada, John Stapleton and DJ Hiphoppapotamus delivering an upbeat mix of reggae, samba and soca.
Once the evening has descended, Paranoid London take to the stage in Data Mine. They conjure existential, audio-visual acid house using field recordings from the frozen Bothnian Bay in Finland and the dried-out Aral Sea in Uzbekistan. This is part of EarthSonic’s ‘Two Seas’ project, which aims to use music to highlight the climate emergency and encourage positive action — a common theme throughout acts, venues and workshops.
It’s a cerebral set to begin with, but the whole venue is engaged, getting even more frantic when bangers like ‘Eating Glue’ kick in. Down the front is the best that the welcoming Shambala crowd has to offer — all ages, genders, sexualities, everyone looking out for each other.
The night ends with Kom Kom, her dark techno giving an apocalyptic feel to Rebel Soul, the crowd often disappearing completely in the murk.
Saturday is distinctly wet but it makes little difference to day two of the Shambolympics, which continues with slip-‘n’-slide rounders and jousting that involves airbeds, pool noodles and hats filled with flour (it’s a long story).
Dub Colossus bring some righteous grooves with their Ethiopian jazz and dub collision, the bass vibrations drying out the crowd. A workshop by Critical Youth Sound System on ‘The Power of Loud: Fighting Fascism with Bass’ follows. The intrinsic power of music to connect us is a constant throughout the festival — including across generations, with all ages present at every show and even an exclusive under-23s booking policy for venue Hertz So Good. At Queen of Pressure, four young brothers start an impromptu mosh pit in the mud to some old-school jungle.
After Friday’s colour matching, Saturday is the fancy dress carnival, with punters wearing looks inspired by song lyrics this year. There happens to be a distinct water theme to a lot of the outfits, particularly rain (Purple, Men, Singing In The, “on your wedding day”), as well as ‘Bridge over Troubled Water’ and ‘Waterfalls’ — thankfully the weather eases up enough that none of the the Yellow Submarines are required.
The rest of the day becomes a fun puzzle of trying to work out people’s costumes. Some don’t take long (‘Tears of a Clown’) while others need a bit more head-scratching at 1am. A favourite was 21 seemingly random images including a postage stamp, Just Because I’m A Woman by Dolly Parton and a still from an obscure Jennifer Lopez film. Second class, second album, Second Act: of course, it’s ‘21 Seconds’.
The highlight on the Solasta stage today is Nubiyan Twist — they enthrall the crowd with their smooth jazz-funk-soul mashup, including a riotous ‘Carry Me’, with the horn section in full effect. Throw in some lovers rock, the highlife of ‘Pray For Me, Part 2’ and a noisy guest appearance from O.’s Joe Henwood, and the torrential rain is forgotten, everyone getting stuck into the dance.
In the Compass Presents spiegeltent, Gaba Ghanoush unleashes an assault of jungletek and hardcore techno in contrast to the more refined surroundings of stained glass, mirrors and wood panelling. It’s a confounding mix of drag and MCing, with accompaniment from aerial performers and a gang of rave druids whipping the front row with nettles. Some tracks went so hard that they began to lose all sense of rhythm, the feral crowd hanging on for dear life.
Sunday gets off to a gentler start with Penguin Cafe, playing their own songs along with those from their precursor, Penguin Cafe Orchestra, led by the late Simon Jeffes, father of current bandleader Arthur. With ebbs and flows of violins, harmonium and penny whistles, their warm, witty instrumentals soothe a few sore heads. However, there’s no mistaking this for plainly comforting music — songs like ‘Telephone and Rubber Band’ and ‘Perpetuum Mobile’ are quietly experimental and eccentric.
Shambala isn’t one to shy away from a bit of convoluted wordplay (looking at you, Swingamajig venue), so it’s no surprise to see Badminton Levy & The Grass Court Games on the Common by the lake — a relaxing afternoon of reggae, dancehall, badminton and cricket, the perfect place for a cocktail while getting warmed up for the evening.
Emma-Jean Thackray provides her offbeat, woozy jazz, the gentle pulse of ‘Remedy’ distinct from Waldo’s Gift, who approach the genre with a post-rock influence, heavy drums and bass backing ethereal, glitchy guitar. Los Bitchos are a perfect band for the sunset slot, with their sunny surf-rock and cumbia ramping up into bongo freakouts and the disco of ‘La Bomba’ once the sun has gone down.
Introduced by (apparently) the real Madonna and beset on all sides by caricatures of the press, It’s Britney’s Bitch x DJ Can’t Say No tells the story of Britney Spears’ life, career and influence through some hasty costume changes and that most traditional of storytelling methods: donk remixes. This must be the sweatiest venue of the weekend, the air thick as the crowd goes berserk. The eras eventually mix into one as the set gets somehow faster and faster, the venue’s pillars shaking from the movement. It seems oddly fitting that someone whose whole life has been defined by unhealthy, overbearing attention from others should be celebrated in such a ridiculous way.
Om Unit delivers one of the final sets of the festival in the Enchanted Woods, transformed at night into a place of technicolour hallucination. This is unlike most of the dub that’s been pounding from other venues all weekend — introspective and abstract, with techno and elements of his Acid Dub Studies series throughout, the warped, whirring basslines reverberating among the trees.
After spending time here, it becomes clear that the positive, accepting nature of the attendees is no accident. The festival itself sets this ethical, inclusive tone and everything follows. It recently became the first worker-owned festival in the UK, there’s a hefty ticket discount for arriving by public transport, and it has been meat-free since 2016 but still has a huge variety of food available.
There’s something for everyone at Shambala, provided you’re willing to get involved. Aside from the excellent range of music on offer, there’s Playtopia, the huge kids’ area, a roller disco, healing meadow, Bob Ross-off painting competition, poetry and spoken word in Talu, and pottery, woodworking and glassblowing workshops, to mention just a handful. Regardless of what time you end up going to bed, you can be sure of an energetic and radical end to your summer at Shambala.