Boomtown 2026 review and star rating: ★★★★★

Pirates are squaring up to one another, clenching their jaws as they prepare to strike blows. Hundreds are jeering around the ring, where the crowd have been whipped into a feverish mob. Villagers are peering from the rooftops to get a glimpse of the fight.

But before long, the anger is tempered by a matronly lady who draws the stand-off to a close by inviting the locals into the ring for an Irish jig. The atmosphere has gone from intense to joyous and soon I’m one of the villagers throwing shapes.

Strangers, including that man from the fight, grab me by the arm for a dance. 

I’m in some sort of Medieval village, the higgeldy-piggeldy houses tumbling down the road, and outside each of them, some sort of bizarre character touts jewels and tip-offs for who will win the next fight. 

This is Boomtown, perhaps the world’s best immersive theatre show, which happens once a year in the South Downs National Park near Winchester. It’s a music festival focusing on electronic music, with genres like drum ‘n’ bass, house and bassline a focus on the line-up, but there are also more commercial bands too, like the Vengaboys. Also on the line-up was queer band Scissor Sisters and rapper Shaggy. 

But Boomtown separates itself from the masses of other festivals with its unrivalled and industry-leading immersive entertainment. I was in the Old Town, which is one of a handful of districts, each touting a unique vibe.

Metropolis is dedicated to corporate satire, ripping into the likes of Elon Musk, and invites you to become a recruit for a trip into space, with an immersive supermarket themed like Aldi but dedicated to exploring nostalgia and memory (within which I had my soul interpreted at a cobbler’s shop, my hair cut at a hair salon and my face beamed onto a plate at a dining table). Area 404 is another, some sort of dystopian wasteland with abandoned technology strewn around.

Together the districts comprise the fictional destination of Boomtown. Lots of festivals have loose immersive storytelling, but the level of immersive engagement at Boomtown is astonishing.

The festival goes so much further, with hundreds of actors regurgitating lines and sending ticketholders on quests that tie into one ultimate narrative. The story follows an evil corporate space company who are exhausting the earth of its natural resources, such as water. The hippy uprising tries to usurp the overlords and regain the planet. The festival has a team of year-round writers who work on threading the storytelling into every aspect of the visitor experience.

Hole-in-the-wall experiences at every turn

There are hole-in-the-wall immersive venues at every turn, encasing you in the action 18 hours per day. I’d have spent the whole weekend crawling through weird tunnels, squirting passers-by with water pistols and coming up with business plans, but the 30-plus degree heat, and music line-up forced me to take breaks. I only saw a tenth of the theatre, no one could possibly see more, but you sense it everywhere you go.

It’s best to take the messaging at face value and not think too much about the intracies. One minute the Boomtown storyline is telling us to break free from our silos, the next it is chastising the wealthy, which doesn’t sound much like a grown up conversation to me. There is also a branded San Miguel stage in the Metropolis area, which is essentially a huge take down of corporations, and the festival is part-owned by Live Nation, but as I say, best not to think too much about the contradictions and just have a nice time.

Instead of getting into the weeds, buy into the genuinely wholesome overall feeling of unison: it is heartening to see teens and twenty-somethings running around with litter bags to collect rubbish for their £20 deposit, and the general “leave no trace” immersive messaging seems to cut through: the site is fairly clean for a big festival (around 75,000 attend) and surely that is a good lesson for young people (and us all). “Vibe check” notifications coming through on the app about hydrating at 2AM add to the genuine sense of care.

Ferocious pyrotechnics

Beginning as a small independent gathering in 2009, the festival grew to 65,000 capacity in the 2010s, the stages spanning both the lower bowl and upper echelons of the Matterley Estate. Access the epic Lion’s Den stage – with some of the most ferociously good pyrotechnics – via a back-breaking staircase, which is hideous  after a few pints. After scaling down post-pandemic 2026 earmarks a “radical redesign,” bringing the biggest site to date. 

Boomtown gets a bad reputation – or, at least, judged – because of its music and the audience it attracts, who tend to be younger and intensely into partying. Those judgements aren’t fair: firstly, the festival has done a lot to work on its branding, and the audience is more diverse now (possibly because of those preventative £400 tickets) but mainly, it’s a shame that the festival has been reduced a hedonistic image when actually it is the most expansive and impressive adult playground in the world. Nowhere is this fun. It would be a cliche to call it an adult Disneyland, so I’ll do just that.

Like a rocket ship, surely Boomtown’s projection is stratospheric. 

Boomtown returns in 2026; go to boomtownfair.co.uk