WOMAD 2026
Thursday 23rd to Sunday 26th July 2026Neston Park, Atworth Lane, Corsham, Wiltshire, SN13 9TG, England MAP
final tier £260/£285 for 3/4 days
Just like starting over – WOMAD at Neston Park, July 2026
Running a successful festival is tough. Running one that aims to present the audience with the best music you’ve never heard before must be even tougher.
In 2025, the WOMAD team took a year out to review the festival's future and find a new site for the event. Having considered several locations, they settled on one close to "home" in two ways - close to their old location at Charlton Park (near Malmsbury) and close to the Real World Studios (in nearby Box). So, if you want to go by train, you still go to Chippenham and catch the shuttle bus from the station there, it just trundles off into another direction now: to Neston Park, the stately home of the Fuller family (yes, think brewery, there's a link).
There is no shortage of beautiful countryside in Wiltshire; the new site is a lovely location too, bordered by gentle hills, large old trees and a field of sunflowers in bloom. It's quite a strange blend of the new and the familiar for me, the site is set up with the usual professionalism, many food and market stalls are good old favourites, but all the stages have new names and designs, and the layout is much more compact. It's exciting and a bit confusing at the same time. And my well-honed radar for knowing where the nearest toilets are needs a total reset.
Thursday, arrivals:
The meadows used for camping are parched, the ground so dry it’s cracked in places - summer 2026 is a stark reminder of our changing climate. Good to know that WOMAD partnered with green energy company Grid Faeries x Ecotricity again, to power its main stage.
Another tradition they are keeping is opening the festival on Thursday with a main World Stage performance that involves the local community (there are special ticket options for local people too). It's the Voices for Life choir this year, alas, we spent a bit too much time setting up our tents, so the first performance we saw, at the new Sunflower Stage, was Tian Qiyi (UK/China), a band of two brothers who, as the offspring of two musicians who met at WOMAD way back in the 1990s, acknowledge that they owe their very existence to the festival. Quite a legacy, WOMAD! Their music is accessible and yet highly experimental, blending dub, psychedelia and punk with traditional Chinese, Mongolian and Irish influences. K.O.G Soundsystem (Ghana) kicked off the action at the Big Top Stage, being first to play the second largest venue at the site and their energetic afrobeat seemed to draw everyone there, the tent was packed and jumping. I’ve seen K.O.G. quite a few times over the years, at festivals and in venues big and small – they always get the audience going.
WOMAD features not just music but plenty of good food from around the world, and a Taste the World venue is still there, but this stage where performers hold cooking sessions during the day (something unique to WOMAD), now turns into a party venue at night with DJs from around the world; whatever energy K.O.G had left us we spent dancing to Ruby Khaira, Sofie K and Livwutang. I've no idea what time the bars were meant to be closing, but the cider was still flowing when we trundled back to our tents around 2am. Good selection too, though the average pint is quite steeply priced at £6.90 (mind, you can bring your own booze to the festival site).
WOMAD 2028 features over 400 acts from 38 countries, whatever I do, I'll only get a smattering of that covered, so I'll have to focus on some of my highlights here.
Friday:
Wesli (Haiti/Canada) was the perfect opener for the main/World Stage, great choice with his joyful blend of Haitian roots music, afrobeat and hip hop (and that's just the bits I recognised), played with a backdrop of Haiti's natural beauty and dancers from a carnival procession.
Derya Yildirim & Grup Simsek (Germany/Türkiye) presented thoughtful Anatolian tunes laced with funk and psychedelia and reflected on the immigrant experience in Germany.
Annie and the Caldwells (USA) are an extended family from Mississippi that does the gospel, complete with call and response and probably the closest I will ever come to attending a service, voluntarily at least. Their music wants to save your soul and acknowledges the struggle of life, but it is also supremely joyful.
Barrington Levy (Jamaica) probably drew the weekend's largest crowd to the World Stage with his afternoon reggae/dancehall set. He covered his hits and went a bit over time with Black Roses - he wasn't having being told that he needed to finish by the stage manager.
Very glad I did not miss Made Kuti (Nigeria). The son of Femi, grandson of Fela, is a star in his own right and gave one of the most upbeat and energetic afrobeat performances, very well-choreographed with the band's dancers too. Could easily have been a headliner.
Greentea Peng (UK), London's super cool psychedelic trip hop sister (she might flinch at this description, but her music really is hard to categorise), was the Friday headliner; her set had the right balance of chill and political awareness. A young headliner too at only 31, she's come a long way since I last saw her (Glastonbury 2022).
I managed to sample a total of 8 performances on Friday, all very good, but my favourite was Ganavya (India/USA). She's 8 months pregnant, she says - not that we necessarily need to be told, it's obvious, and she makes that topic part of her chatter between performing fabulously soaring traditional tunes in Tamil (and some other languages from the Indian subcontinent). A very special set and one of the most beautiful voices I've ever had the pleasure of listening to.
Our little group expanded and contracted throughout the day, and I have a somewhat hazy memory of several hours of cheerful bar and DJ hopping with various people until the small hours. On my way back to our campsite, I noticed that some of the large, mature trees that provide much needed shade during the day are being used as backdrop for beautiful and surprising light projections at night. This was the work of Bristol’s Limbic cinema, I’ve been told.
Saturday:
I am not an early riser after all that drinking and dancing and really appreciate events (let alone tent neighbours) that start the main action after mid-day, so Noura Mint Seymali (Mauritania) was my first call on Saturday, another powerful voice, followed by Mixantena de Santa Cecilia (Mexico), 9-piece brass and dance band who are mixing cumbia, bolero and merequetengue (I do hope I’ve spelt this correctly!). As WOMAD is the acronym for World of Music, Arts and Dance, I can't think of another act I've seen combining all three aspects better. The audience participation involved dancers descending from the stage into the packed tent and passing a small bull statue around; I am glad to confirm the little bull made it back to the stage safely - somehow. I lost all my mates in the mayhem, but we manged to re-assemble afterwards for Big Pollo (Peru) at the smaller nearby Village Stage, a bunch of punky rockers who mixed their national fare with a rousing rendition of Come Together, dedicated to Lennon and Harrison, and, wait for it.... a version of Auld Lang Syne, which has somehow managed to become part of Peruvian musical lore - they say. Great fun. I saw the band later in the crowd, watching Daniela Mercury (Brazil) and her spectacularly colourful song and dance headliner set at the World Stage.
From the ultimate fusion to the very traditional: Nakibembe Xylophone Troupe (Uganda), six men dressed in white giving a fast-paced performance on a giant wooden xylophone (embaire), the sheer definition of polyrhythmic.
I missed Alfa Mist (UK), who, as usually reliable sources tell me, was also very good. There's an impressive list of jazz, rap and hip hop in the programme this year, attracting the younger crowd (also, Zack Polanski makes an appearance at the World of Words stage, joining one of the scheduled discussions) and the Hip Yak Poetry Shack caters for this taste too. I too sampled some Indian Hip Hop from the Ta Dhom Project (India) but ultimately paid for Friday night's indulgence with a somewhat earlier night on Saturday, although the dance stages went on until 4am and some tempting beats came from the Rhythm and Rhyme stage, must have been Volta 45 (Ghana/UK). By day, this stage mostly hosts interactive workshops, many with performers who are on site for their gigs.
Sunday:
You can do laughing yoga, visit the Wandering Spa or have a gong bath as part of the festival's wellness programme if that's your idea of a nice Sunday morning. If. Instead, vaguely hoping that the shower queues would disperse a bit and being curious about our surroundings, I took a walk into pretty Neston village, about 10 minutes uphill from our camping area. Keeping the locals on side is an important part of any festival's future, and so far, so good, everyone I talked to seemed quite happy with the way things are being managed, and the noise levels were low. Fingers crossed.
I finally did get my shower (with a minimal queue), just in time to see Garifuna Collective (Belize) do their unique blend of rhythms at the World Stage (the cultural background of this music is both tragic and fascinating), then raced over to the Sunflower Stage. Whilst the site is more compact now, there's still some distance between stages, there needs to manage sound bleed, but the lay out of the site creates little cul-de-sacs in some places whilst having pedestrian bottle necks in others, something to be re-considered for future years, perhaps. Anyway, Kankawa Nagarra (Australia), who I did not want to miss, played and sang her version of desert blues like she's lived and earned it - and at 83, she probably has.
Some lovely harmonies from Tanxugueiras (Spain) made quite the contrast to the spot-on energetic Hip Hop from Wild Wild Women (India), then we got news of a schedule change: Hempress Sativa (Jamaica) was delayed at the airport and would swap places with Seppuku Pistols (Japan), causing the worst clash of the weekend for me as I had both the pistols and Ustad Noor Bakhsh (Pakistan) down as my must sees that day. They play, of course, at opposite ends of the site. I started with Ustad Noor at the Village Stage, another musician who found acclaim later in life (wiki can’t even tell me how old he is and gives an estimate – at least 76). He plays the benju, a kind of zither and listening to him quickly transports you to a trans like meditative state, but I reluctantly tore myself away to face another race across the site. Exhausting and I don't recommend it, but it had two benefits: I got to see the end of the children's procession as they returned to the World of Children area, which is now inside the arena. The procession had a Noah's Ark theme and was quite beautiful, led by someone carrying a fantastic blue-green mermaid sculpture. And I got to see the second half of Seppuku Pistols; I recognised them as the band that had given an unscheduled surprise performance outside the Real Ale Bar on Saturday afternoon. They pulled out all the stops with a mix of punk rock and traditional Japanese drumming, resulting in full audience participation, crowd surfing and yes, a mosh pit, now that is an unusual sight at WOMAD! On the downside, one of the crowd surfing performers broke his foot and now has to continue the tour sitting down.
From the frenetic to the sublime, Jose Gonzales (Sweden) did a very lovely, chilled set, but it suffered from attracting too large and noisy a crowd, making getting into the spirit somewhat difficult. Guys, talking loudly over a man and his acoustic guitar is a bit rude and affects those of us who are trying to listen. Just saying.
Oumou Sangaré (Mali) was the Sunday headliner; her performance was impressive, and as I am writing this it just dawned on me that all three headliners I saw this weekend were essentially women with a backing band, hah. As was my highlight of the evening, the final session at the Big Top tent with Yasmine Hamdan (Lebanon), a haunting set, sung in Arabic, and the audience was absolutely up for being in tarab with her. I could do with more of this kind of music in the small hours. The nearby Lunched Out Lizard Cafe offered late night dancing with loud and lively tunes but was a bit too hefty for me.
And that was it, for this year, anyway.
Monday, as we depart:
A shout out to the volunteers at the medical aid tent who provided excellent advice and support to the one in our group with a dodgy ankle, and to the general efforts to make the event as accessible as possible (well it's a field in Wiltshire, but they do try!). Our friend who had booked a mobility scooter for Friday could pick it up right next to the taxi drop off point, making things a lot easier than they had been on the old site, and whilst we did not need it, there now is a repair shop on site that can fix (almost) any broken item - good idea.
The wifi signal was a bit hit and miss, depending on network – the O2 user in our group having the patchiest results.
As usual, we only knew a fraction of the artists on the line up, but the overall quality of the acts booked was very high, as was the variety of what's on offer, despite the reduced number of stages. Again in 2026, WOMAD had one of the most chilled audiences, from babes in arms to couples in their 80s, all generations are represented and rubbing along well enough, there is hardly any aggro. (Ok, if I want to find a fault, the “wall-forming-habit” of camping chair users has crept in here as well.) Performers mingle with the crowd all weekend after giving signing sessions at the onsite WOMAD merch shop (some years ago I got Anoushka Shankar to sign a cd for me there, I am still a bit star struck); the vibe is generally great, helped by good food, drink and …… sunshine. I got home sore-footed, covered in dust and grime, tired but happy. The new site will probably need a few minor lay-out tweaks, but it works and is big enough for the new capacity of about 25,000. At least I think that’s what the new capacity is, I have seen different figures. It is down from the 40,000 the old site could hold, so might be worth booking tickets earlier in future.
Final thoughts:
Before the first band took to the World Stage on Friday, WOMAD founder Peter Gabriel, no other, made a surprise appearance, taking the opportunity to thank, WOMAD's director, Chris Smith, for his many years of dedicated work. Chris is leaving to take on other work. As his birthday coincided with the festival weekend, this was the last time he enjoyed (endured?) the crowd singing the happy birthday ditty to him. Let's finish with one of his quotes from an interview he gave earlier this year (published on fixr blog on 23/06):
"WOMAD has always been about more than a weekend of music. Since its inception, the festival has stood for curiosity, cultural exchange, and the simple yet powerful idea that bringing people together – across borders, backgrounds, and beliefs – matters."
Indeed, it does. So, no more fall years, ok? Bring on WOMAD 2027. We'll be back.
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