Live At Leeds is set to take a year off in 2026, to ensure “the best possible version of the festival for the future”.
The event’s ‘In The Park’ and ‘In The City’ editions have taken place in spring/summer and autumn, respectively, in recent years. LAL launched its first iteration in 2007.
Live At Leeds: In The Park 2025 was held in Temple Newsam Park, with performances from Bloc Party, Manic Street Preachers, The Snuts, Yard Act, Sigrid and more.
LAL: In The City – which focuses on newer, rising acts – this year hosted the likes of Fat Dog, Divorce, Westside Cowboy and Adult DVD across multiple venues and stages in Leeds city centre.
Today (Friday December 12), organisers have announced that neither version of Live At Leeds will run next year.
“Live at Leeds ‘In the Park’ and ‘In the City’ will be taking a break in 2026,” the team wrote in a statement.
“Both festivals are organised by a small, passionate team of music lovers, who have been proud to deliver amazing festivals, every year for the last 18 years.
“However, we have decided that we need to pause for a year to allow us to move forward with the best possible version of the festival for the future.”
They continued: “We know how important both festivals are to the city, to the independent businesses they support, to the emerging artists they showcase but most of all to the fans of live music who support us year in year out.
“The team are fully committed to coming back, better than ever, for our 20th anniversary in 2027 and we are excited to share our plans with you soon.”
Past instalments of Live At Leeds have seen early performances from Ed Sheeran, Mumford & Sons, Catfish And The Bottlemen, Royal Blood and The Maccabees.
Leeds currently hosts Leeds Festival, the Northern leg of Slam Dunk, and Millennium Square’s annual summer concert series. Next year, the inaugural edition of Roundhay Festival will take place at Roundhay Park.
The latter is operated by the team behind BST Hyde Park, and will feature headline shows from Lewis Capaldi and Pitbull.
A November 2024 report from the Association of Independent Festivals (AIF) found that 72 UK festivals had been cancelled or postponed that year, doubling figures from the previous year.
John Rostron, AIF CEO, called 2024 a “devastating period” for festival organisers in the UK. “The festival sector generates significant revenue in and around local economies as well as to the Treasury every year,” he said.
“We have campaigned tirelessly for targeted, temporary government intervention which, evidence shows, would have saved most of the independent events that have fallen in 2024.
“It is sad to see that this erosion has been allowed to continue under this Government. We have great events, with great demand, and we’re doing all we can. They need to step up, and step up now.”
Oscar Matthews, co-owner of Barn On The Farm, spoke to NME in early 2024 about the cancellation and postponement of various music festivals.
“It’s inevitable and it’s already started, but when you start to lose smaller festivals, events, gig spaces and venues, the opportunities disappear for new and emerging talent to get on stage and get their music heard,” he explained. “They’ll suffer and that will inevitably have a knock-on effect further up the chain.”
Alex Lee Thomson – Director of Green House Group, which coordinates strategic digital marketing campaigns for festivals including Barn On The Farm, Rockaway Beach and 2000Trees – admitted that the UK “probably had too many summer festivals”.
“[They are] all competing for the same real estate, artist and customer-wise,” he told NME. “Most independent festivals have a very delicate cash-flow, so lockdown followed by the general economic state of the UK right now has made what was already very difficult, just impossible.”
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