The Association of Independent Festivals (AIF) has released the 2025 edition of its Festival Forecast, which includes the first full count of the UK’s festival sector.
AIF has identified 592 music festivals in the UK in 2025, comprising 360 greenfield festivals and 232 single-venue or multi-venue festivals.
Of that total, AIF says that four are major festivals with a capacity of 80,000+, seven are ‘large’ (cap. 50,000 – 79,999), 33 are ‘medium’ (20,000 – 49,999), 334 are ‘small’ (1,000 – 19,999) and 214 are ‘micro’ (less than 1,000).
The total number of festivals in the UK has fallen since 2019, when AIF believes there were 800 to 900. The association attributes this steep drop to the onset of the pandemic and the subsequent impact of Brexit.
At least 96 festivals fell between 2019–2022, 36 in 2023, 78 in 2024 and so far, 40 have fallen in 2025, it says. AIF CEO John Rostron recently unpicked the key issues facing the beleaguered UK sector this summer.
“This will be an important document when it comes to describing our situation to policymakers, regulators and the media”
The Forecast also points to initiatives designed to help ease the burden, including AIF’s Fallow Festival Fund, launched in February, and the LIVE Trust in January.
It concludes with AIF repeating its call for the UK Government to introduce a Music Festival Tax Relief, which it says would mitigate closures and help support the recovery and growth of the festival sector.
Discussing the newly released Festival Forecast 2025, Rostron says: “This is the first time we have been able to map the UK festival market by the numbers in such a detailed way right down to the micro festivals that make up such an important part of our sector.
“It illustrates the dominance of two major corporations at the top, with Live Nation in particular having an enormous grip on the festival market. But it also highlights the collective importance of AIF and other independent festivals who make up so much of the festival landscape. This will be an important document when it comes to describing our situation to policymakers, regulators and the media as we move through this summer festival season.”
Read the full Festival Forecast 2025 here.
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