ANEXPERIENCE FESTIVAL 2026: REVIEW

A FESTIVAL WHICH CAPTIVATES EVERY EMOTION WHILST KEEPING THE MAGIC AS NUMBERS GROW

8th July 2026

As AnExperience Festival returned for its third year, it's clear that the word has spread far beyond the 500-strong circle at Three Pools Farm in 2024. Having attended every edition so far, this is a festival we feel most connected to and being able to stand within its grounds, documenting its growth is something special. This is the first year that the festival felt truly established, with its growing reputation attracting an even larger gathering of people bringing a sense of camaraderie which has always sat at the heart of AnExperience events.

A standout for us this year was the festival’s newest stage addition: The Living Room, run by CratesRus, a new second hand record shop in South London, and powered by Funktion-One soundsystem.

A Mongolian yurt tucked away behind the hill with a water feature running outside, its cosy set up perfectly complemented the experimental music it played which included Acid House, Techno, Breaks, and more. It also acted as a vinyl shop and workshop during the daytime, making it a space to be constantly excited about.

The mix between niche sub-genres and obscure lineups fed the spontaneous element of the festival, because you never knew what you were going to stumble across.Some notable standouts were Krunx who mixed a live acid/tekno set with his chaotic but beautiful hardware set-up overflowing onto a truss table and Mazoo, who played an experimental dub set peaking with a dubstep mix of ‘Lost Mi Love’.

In some way, this stage felt symbolic of Bristol’s musical identity, a city where audiences actively seek out the unconventional.

Yet, The Living Room was a small corner of the festival. Let us zoom out and rewind to the start of the show on Friday.

Downbeat Melody, run by Steve Rice and John Stapleton, started playing at midday to welcome punters as they began entering the festival. They continued to play their refined selections of groovy reggae, dub, funk, and so on for people to gently wiggle throughout the weekend in reprieve of more intense stages. We would love for this stage to stay open into the later hours of the festival, even as a chill out space.

Sherbersky then opened Pangea at 7pm with a 90-minute set, culminating in ten minutes of Nina Simone playing cleanly out of Sinai Sound System, which framed the Pangea booth.

At 10pm Tim Edey, the one man band, was the first live act to grace the AnExperience stage. Walking to the front expecting to see a full band, it took a moment to register that this was one person, one exceptionally talented man. The crowd clearly felt the same, chanting for more songs after his set time ended.

There was impeccable curation of live music, ranging from Emmanu-El’s Gospel Academy (a profound experience) to Bloco B’s thumping drums and the Cheeky Girl’s booty-shaking energy.

By Sunday, Tash LC turned Pangea Stage into a full-blown carnival, single-handedly reviving everyone's weary bodies. The bass was heavy - people laying on the ground, feeling the vibrations through them while soaking up the sun - a beautiful, bittersweet moment of collective presence, knowing the weekend was drawing to a close.

The energy only amplified with BCUC, who brought an incredible, raw intensity to the stage that captivated the crowd.

Reggae legend Dennis Bovell also delivered an absolute masterclass, culminating in a deeply moving finale where he closed his set completely a cappella with "What a Wonderful World"- a standout moment.

With so much talent on offer on Sunday, the only problem was that many of these main acts clashed on the timetable, leaving festival-goers with some tricky choices to make.

Walking from the forest, past the lake, we made our way to Ruffage, which underwent a glow-up this year, transforming from a tent to a squat rave, complete with a 'Let By' sign out front.

Records hung from the ceiling as Scotland Yard Sound System blasted from all four corners. This year's lineup included jungle and hardcore legends such as Jerome Hill, Louise+1, and Hughesee, alongside younger but equally brilliant artists including JPEG, Elysium, Sierpinski and Brava, the last of whom managed to cut Ruffage's power during her set shortly before getting it back up and running again.

This festival is truly the mark that kicks off summer for many. It’s the kind of weekend where you leave wishing you’d dabbled in even more of the activities, having spent so much time dancing to the amazing selection of music from around the globe. But beyond the stages was a playground of creative, mindful, and beautifully chaotic spaces.

Taking center stage as a main activity was a physical, hand-made wooden butt plug workshop. Yes, you read that right. We just hope people handled all those tools safely before having a drink!

If woodwork wasn't your thing, the festival’s intimate, DIY energy offered plenty of other ways to keep the brain ticking. Dotted around the site you would’ve found:

Mindful Workshops: From pottery throwing to a relaxing tea-drinking workshop.

Basti's Traveling Sauna: The ultimate spot to detoxify your soul right next to the huge lake.

The Beautiful Central Lake: Providing the ultimate daytime reset swim (shoutout to Matteo for diving off the top in the rain).

All of these activities were perfectly designed to ground, rejuvenate, and prepare you for the night to come.

Sunday was especially fun, with Joeti’s giant skipping rope battle taking place against a backdrop of people running at each other in giant Zorbs, rolling down the hill, and then running at each other all over again. Stumbling upon a hidden piano to play in the woods, tracking down the elusive Walkabout Pirate, or meeting up under the iconic Ferris wheel were all brilliant additions, too. While there weren't many traditional circus acts, the festival’s vibrant, hands-on spirit meant it never felt like anything was missing.

Additionally, Smoky Tentacles arrived to upgrade last year’s folk tent, open 24-hours serving food, rum-hot-chocolate, and bean bags to sit on. The Gaff provided similar reprieve, now open for longer hours during the day, which helped punters shelter from the pelting rain on Saturday.

Indian Summer also had open decks for their new rig, Version 1, for those with a USB and an experimental itch to scratch.

And then there was Willis Ville, the pink tent dedicated to synths, scratched vinyls, fart noises mixed into beats, and the occasional dildo - you really just had to be there.

If there is one thing AnExperience caters to, it is breadth. At any given time, there was a room for everyone.

One misstep that stood out to us, however, was that welfare was positioned too far from the stages, meaning those requiring aid had to walk to the furthest corner of the festival to reach the tent. Other elements of health and safety were well managed, though.

Security were friendly and kind, but extremely competent. An example of this was taking reports of a 'creepy man' seriously, asking him to leave a stage and monitoring him throughout. This was very much in line with AnExperience's ethos: No Bullies, No Wallies, No Heroes.

One may complain that there were not many areas to relax at night should you have found yourself overstimulated, however that may be a kink that is ironed out in years to come. Some steps were taken this year, such as the piano in the forest for punters to play. We would love to see more interactive features, and more fire pits to gather around when you're not feeling like being amoungst a crowd.

When energy was low but spirits were high, everyone came together at the Pangea stage to spend the last few hours as one big eternity. Even though there was a slight urge to quickly explore more parts of the festival for the last remaining hours, Bella made it extremely hard to leave Pangea with her eclectic collection of bouncy Cumbia and Latin influenced rhythms that have such a magnetic power and you can’t help but get involved to shake your hips. She successfully reminded everyone that they were just where they needed to be.

Kesh then took over for the last set of the festival with some old school reggae classics that really got everyone in the feels - we saw people arm in arm listening to the iconic Sam Cooke ‘If I Had a Hammer’ (the closing song of course), hundreds of people forming the biggest group hug to the most magical, memorable moment of the festival. Proper AnExperience style.

After last year's tension as a result of the exclusive crew party - Kesh made a point to all during his last set that there would be no crew party this year and after saying a few words to thank the crew and his mates for making the festival happen, revealed pot and pans amongst the trees where everyone was invited to explore their musical talents, grab a stick, hit a pan and drum to create rhythms together to close the final hours of the festival before heading back home - a truly magical and well thought through moment.

OVER 60S INTERVIEW

For veterans of the legendary underground party scene in the UK and around the world, heading to AnExperience felt like a massive, joyful homecoming - largely thanks to the festival’s age diverse initiative offering free entry to anyone 60 and over.

Fee and Wilf (Filth), whose partying roots go all the way back to the days of punk gigs, Stonehenge, Goa parties, and the iconic Castlemorton, found that the festival instantly captured the magic they fell in love with decades ago.

"What's going on there is exactly what we were doing at smaller festivals and parties years ago," they shared. "Everyone's on the same level and keeping an eye on each other." Wilf mentions that the warm, welcoming vibe started right at the front gate with a kind security team, which seemed to be a refreshing change for the couple. "It's quite weird having friendly security, so it was really wholesome, no edge, no bad vibes, no weirdness at all."

The highlight for them was a lineup that beautifully connected the past with the present:

"We were just going from place to place and just seeing amazing music. That was the thing that we really resonated with; it included all of our music that we've loved. There was punk, reggae, and everything was mixed and, you know, almost made better. And we just danced our socks off. Yeah, it was brilliant. Absolutely banging."

In regards to the festival's growth and commercialism, Fee and Wilf went on to say;

“It's quite rare, you know. Sometimes festivals get bigger and bigger and bigger and then they lose that at some point, yeah. But I feel really happy that we were part of that gathering and would love to be part of future ones as well, definitely.”

It’s safe to say the experience was a total hit with Filth, and they are already rallying their friends to grab a ticket and join them next year, proving that the over 60’s incentive was a success for the festival's progression.

ARTIST AND COMMUNITY MANAGER INTERVIEW

Fleur, Artist and Community Manager, has been a core pillar of AnExperience since its first edition in 2024. Her journey with the festival actually started on a dancefloor six years ago where she first met co-founder Kesh.

When the festival launched, coming on board felt like a natural extension of a connection that was already there. In those early 500-person days, there was a beautiful scrappiness to it, with everyone doing three jobs at once and figuring things out in real time. Now, the festival draws a crowd of 3,000, and the ambition has scaled right along with the numbers.

Behind the scenes, Fleur’s role covers artist advancing, technical riders, agent and tour manager liaison, hotels, transfers, scheduling. On site she moves between stages, making sure every artist from the headliner to the first act of the afternoon feels genuinely looked after. 'There's a version of festival artist management that's transactional and a bit thankless. We try hard to make ours feel like the opposite.'

She also works on the community side, actively growing audiences beyond the London and Bristol strongholds and engaging people from backgrounds who might not typically find their way into a space like this. Behind her is a team of 16: sound engineers, artist liaisons, stage managers. 'The festival feels like a miniature world, chaotic and beautiful in roughly equal measure.

CLICK TO READ OUR INTERVIEW WITH FLEUR

"Being part of the build from the ground up has been something else. Kesh is one of the best curators I’ve ever come across; he’s constantly thinking and constantly cooking up new ways to push the festival forward. As our programming keeps expanding in scope - with more artists, bigger teams, and higher stakes - my job is to make sure all of that ambition actually lands smoothly on the grass. In practice, that means advancing every single artist on the bill. I need to deeply understand their technical needs, their riders, and what they require to feel comfortable so they can perform at their best. It means liaising with agents and tour managers weeks or even months out, managing expectations on all sides, and ensuring nothing falls through the gap between what has been promised and what is physically possible on the day. It’s the infrastructure of hotels, transfers, and tight scheduling that makes the whole machine look entirely seamless to the crowd.

Once we are live on site, I'm moving constantly between stages -troubleshooting, keeping each line-up running strictly to time, and making sure every artist, from the main headliner to the first act of the afternoon, feels genuinely looked after rather than just processed. There is a common version of festival artist management that feels incredibly transactional and thankless. We try very hard to make ours feel like the exact opposite. Alongside the technical logistics, I work heavily on the community side. We are focused on growing our audiences beyond our original London and Bristol strongholds, actively engaging people from backgrounds who might not typically find their way into an electronic music space like this. That part of the mission matters to me as much as anything else we do. To pull a production like this together, I work alongside a brilliant team of 16—including sound engineers, artist liaisons, and stage managers. All of them are incredibly talented, and most of them are alarmingly humble given what they actually deliver over the weekend. The festival ultimately feels like a miniature world: chaotic and beautiful in roughly equal measure. Honestly, it is a privilege to have been in it from the absolute start, and I wouldn't be able to do any of it without Jack, Jake, Max, Becca, Orla, Zak... the list goes on."

OUR COMMUNITY FEEDBACK

We hope that creating conversations like these can make a change for the better so thank you to everyone who sent their entries in.

Overall, feedback for this year’s AnExperience Festival was positive, with most celebrating the friendly crowd, amazing loud sound systems, and a phone-free environment. The small amount of negative points focused on the early-morning security wake-up call on the final day, alongside suggestions for more campsite toilets, more morning coffee options, and better nighttime lighting.

It is abundantly clear that this festival is made with a lot of love and now, after attending for a few years, we can tell it holds care and justice to listen and deliver.

A word we kept hearing throughout was - safe. This was truly a place that felt safe enough to be yourself, feel vulnerable and experience moments that make you feel alive.

Every team spoken to, from build to security, expresses that AnExperience is the event they look forward to most across the summer. It does not pretend to be perfect, but it does try.

What gives AnExperience its real heart is the community it attracts. Kesh acknowledges this when closing Pangea on Sunday night: 'We're only as good as our mates, and I've got the best fucking mates in the world.'

It is very easy to walk away from AnExperience wishing you had done more, seen more music, made more friends, stayed longer.

We can't wait for what's to come and how this festival will keep its magic as it grows on.

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