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BOOMTOWN FESTIVAL 2025: ENCHANTMENT OR DISENCHANTMENT?
BOOMTOWN FESTIVAL 2025: ENCHANTMENT OR DISENCHANTMENT?
REVIEW
REVIEW
13th August 2025
Photos by Boomtown Festival
Once a fiercely independent festival powered by radical theatre and community with roots in the UK free party scene, Boomtown 2025 saw increased capacity, longer queues, and growing tension between ideals and reality. We asked our community how it felt on the ground this year – here’s what they told us.
ALL PHOTO CREDITS - Boomtown Festival
Boomtown has always been more than just a festival, particularly for the Bristol community who have seen it continue to evolve. For many, it’s been a pilgrimage – a city built on chaos, creativity, connection, and enchantment.
But this year, Boomtown felt a little bit different. It’s well known that the festival increased its capacity this year and that Live Nation owns a considerable stake, so we asked our community how these changes played out in real time. We received an overwhelming response with feedback that was loud, passionate, and at times deeply disheartened.
Let’s start with what almost everyone mentioned: the queues.
‘Six hours queueing without water. People fainting’, read one of the first messages we received. Others echoed the same, describing waiting in blistering heat for hours, with minimal shade or updates. ‘My first night at Boomtown was gone before I even got through the gate.’
While queueing is an unavoidable part of going to a festival, and comparisons can be drawn between the wait times at Glastonbury, the latter has almost double the capacity of Boomtown and yet shorter waiting times. It seems like reducing wait times should be a priority for next year.
The crowd size was another major talking point. The increase in capacity was widely felt, and for many, it diluted the magic. ‘It felt more like Creamfields than Boomtown’, one person wrote. Another said, ‘It didn’t feel like a family anymore.’ That comment was repeated in different forms: ‘Didn’t feel safe for queer people at all’, ‘crowd felt laddish and aggressive’, ‘vibe was so different this year.’
One particularly pertinent quote summed it up nicely:
‘It felt like a music festival, not Boomtown.’
That may sound simple, but it hits at the core of what makes Boomtown special – the feeling that you were part of a story, a culture, a living, breathing experiment in radical celebration of the grassroots. And that sentiment, many felt, wasn’t quite there in 2025.
The welfare and security setup also came under heavy scrutiny, too. ‘Security were intense and aggressive’, read one comment. Another described being searched in a way that felt unnecessarily invasive, and there were multiple accounts of welfare staff being dismissive or unhelpful during mental health episodes. One person shared that a friend having a breakdown was told to ‘put her big girl pants on’ – something that felt jarringly at odds with the festival’s ethos of care and accessibility.
The cashless wristband system also caused problems, particularly for traders. One reported that band top-up glitches resulted in several meals going to waste because customers couldn’t top up or access funds fast enough. Another described the system as ‘completely broken’, with no mediation plan for when people, for whatever reason, were unable to top up their bands.
Yet, amongst the criticism, there were pockets of light. Several people praised smaller venues like Femmegeddon, Enumbers, and other micro-stages that stayed true to Boomtown’s underground roots. ‘The only place that felt like the old Boomtown’, one message said. Others mentioned the daytime atmosphere being more relaxed, and the return of some immersive performances, though these were noticeably reduced from previous years.
Most did enjoy their time overall, despite many of these voices feeling tinged with uncertainty. ‘Still had a good one, but I’m not sure I’d go back’, one person said. Another commented: ‘It was fun, but only because we made it fun. Boomtown didn’t give us much to work with.’
When evaluating the overwhelming feeling from our feedback, across the board there is clear disenchantment with the direction Boomtown is taking. Many pointed to the contradiction between the festival’s anti-capitalist messaging and the increasing presence of corporate ownership and sponsors. As one of our responses remarked: ‘anti-capitalist storyline but bought by a corporation? Okay…’
So where does this leave us?
Boomtown still has the infrastructure to continue being something special. It still has one of the most passionate followings in UK festival culture. But if 2025 taught us anything, it’s that a bigger crowd doesn’t mean a better party. More stages don’t mean more soul.
If Boomtown wants to keep its spirit, it needs to take on feedback seriously. This is not to say that we or our respondents are objectively ‘right’ in their feedback, but this is invaluable for any festival genuinely looking to evolve and improve every year. This is important because once the magic is lost, it’s very hard to rebuild.
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