Boomtown’s radical redesign is a watershed moment for festivals everywhere

“When you’re introducing a new technology for the first time, you don’t have the benefit of previous case studies and data to work with, so testing this concept on a smaller scale last year gave us the confidence to pull it off and go big with it.”

That’s Poppy Handy, Boomtown’s operations director, who’s talking me through the expansion of their hydrogen generator usage. The new Hydro XL stage will run exclusively on the chemical element you learnt all about in school, and emit only water vapour – rather than contribute to the fossil fuel emissions that are slowly killing us all. This technology is uber-new to the festival market, and Boomtown are braving uncharted waters in the hope that others will follow.

“Unless the bigger festivals that have more resources take these risks to step forward, then it just stays stuck, the industry.” That’s Luke Mitchell, Boomtown’s co-founder.

“The idea is that you are having this amazing party in front of this enormous stage production, and then you understand that it is literally giving off water vapour that you can drink at the end,” he continues. “There’s a whole theatrical piece where the audience can go and drink the water that was used to power the generators, because it’s completely distilled and pure.”

If a hydrogen-powered stage and water vapour makes you go “yeah, whatever” like a surly teen in a John Hughes movie, put it this way: Boomtown now has 2% of the energy footprint it had in 2019. Their environmental impact has effectively improved by 98%. That’s staggering, and it’s thanks to several other measures running concurrently with the hydrogen stage: switching from diesel to HVO fuel, a ban on single-use plastic on site, a 98% recycling rate, and many others – everything about the festival has environmental sustainability baked into it.

“Somebody said to me years ago, the most sustainable event is the one that doesn’t happen, and that stuck with me because it’s quite black or white, isn’t it?” Handy says. “It’s like, oh god, should we just stop then? But actually, there’s so much power in what we can do. It’s not true that the most sustainable event is not the one that doesn’t happen. There is so much we can contribute, and pioneering things like hydrogen energy are just steps in those directions.”

For audiences, this removes any guilt they may have around hedonistic fun-time leading to waste and an adverse impact on the local environment. Even if that’s not something we’re entirely cognisant of, it might be in the back of our mind – or better yet, we’ll be inspired to take a leaf out of Boomtown’s book and not only take tents and trash home, but apply creative sustainable thinking to day-to-day life after nursing the post-Boomtown blues.

Indeed, this is a running theme of Boomtown’s new era. These bleeding-edge initiatives don’t just aim to improve things for three days every August; it’s not an exaggeration to say that they set out a blueprint for a better, more inhabitable world.

Back when Boomtown first started, the goal for the founders was simply, “we need to put on the most incredible show, something that will sell tickets,” Mitchell tells me. Boom – they achieved that.

“But then we realised that the gaps in between the stages and the dancing were of equal value, if not more, in some crazy roundabout way,” he continues. “So it’s finding that balance where people can party and have a wild time, and then go and sit, and connect, and discover friends, and have conversations, and just regulate as well. That balance creates an experience that, this year, with the radical redesign, is embodied more than it’s ever been before.”

So what is this whole radical redesign thing?

Well, becoming “the UK’s craziest festival” – as more than one press outlet has put it – comes with certain connotations. Boomtown obviously doesn’t want to undo anything that makes it special – just ask the dozens of people in this documentary, some of whom say it’s the one weekend a year that reminds them they are alive. However, they have seriously stepped up their welfare game, expanded the site map, revived and reworked some beloved pre-COVID stages, and, as mentioned, made inroads into progressive energy solutions. 2025 was the soft-launch of this new era, but it’s an all-out glow-up for 2026.

“Boomtown, from a harm reduction perspective, is really at the top of its game for what it can deliver and provide on site,” Handy explains. “It’s not just around drug use,” she says – though they have recruited the Bristol Drugs Project for campsites this year, hoping to encourage attendees to seek advice without judgement. Additionally, there are AA meetings, talking therapy, the Samaritans, and a team focused on violence against women and girls. There’s also a ‘vibe check’ programme that encourages ravers to make pledges to party smart – to remember that it’s a marathon, not a sprint; to look after each other; to have food and water so they don’t end up in the medical tent and ruin their weekend, etc., etc.

Harm reduction isn’t a box-ticking exercise here. It’s bricked into everything. “It’s almost the mycelium, isn’t it?” Handy says, referencing the fungus known as “nature’s underground superhighway.” In other words: “They all affect each other – the network of ideas – and so those ideas feature in our narrative. They feature with our performers. They feature in the messaging we put out. They feature in our services and our agency, in our support services – it’s one big picture.”

She and Mitchell stress that Boomtown isn’t going for holier-than-thou here. It’s about “a humble yet mature holding that we have spent the last decade trying to build up to,” as Mitchell puts it. Their attitude is closer to, here’s what we’ve learnt; maybe some of it will resonate for you.

“It’s been [formulated] through our own personal development process as well, us as a leadership team learning how to step forward, how to make sure we’re not coming across as above anyone else,” he continues. “We are all looking across at each other. And I think the values that come forward out of that – respect for yourself, each other, and the planet – which are our three core values that really stand out – they are embodied by the entire ecosystem that is the Boomtown experience.”

For Chapter Five, the Boomtown experience is more multifaceted than ever. And not only because of the welfare network and hydrogen power. The wider site expansion, Mitchell says, gives the fest a more generational appeal without cosplaying as a mini Glastonbury. When they relaunched after COVID, they were restrained to an intimate, compact map, more amenable to younger ravers – a core demographic that they’ll continue catering to. But Chapter Five’s expansive site is accessible for the whole swathe of music, art, and story lovers. It goes without saying, but there’s something for everyone.

One half-right headline doing the rounds this year is: the bands are back in town. That narrative is nudged along by the return of the Lion’s Den stage, beloved for staging band-bands rather than the more stereotypically ‘Boomtown’ sounds that skew electronic and DJ. But the festival is careful to maintain a democratic setup so that no one area becomes top dog (or lion), and this year the Lion’s Den will play host to Sub Focus and FCUKERS as happily as it will Madness and Scissor Sisters.

Similarly, Grand Central, another of the bigger stages, is framed as “the heart of the city – the home of live music.” Once associated primarily with the drum and bass genre, today, the festival’s heart isn’t so siloed. Old-guard punk bands like Less Than Jake collide with hardcore-boom newcomers High Vis. Wild-pop visionaries like Ashnikko and Peaches are allowed to offset spoken-word legend Kae Tempest, lyrical rising star Songer, and even Skindred. There’s a dismantling of hierarchy at work here, leaving audiences unable to predict where their favourite fringe act is going to be playing – or, in other words, unable to pigeonhole stages as at many other festivals.

“We don’t really like to have any main heroes stage as such – stages that can take bigger audiences,” Mitchell tells me. “If we end up with, like, Glastonbury’s Pyramid Stage, where that’s the biggest, then it breaks the overall experience at Boomtown, which is all-encompassing inside this container, and we like to see each area of equal value.” The magic happens when you wander, lose yourself, end up part of a story – not when you’re hustling with blinkers on from campsite to rock show.

Handy explains that “by expanding the site with the radical redesign, giving us more space to breathe, we’ve built in some really nice and interesting areas this year, like the Observatory.” This is an academic research hub whose direction is led by Dr. Martha Newson. A highly acclaimed cognitive anthropologist, Newson uses evolutionary theory to understand human behaviours and has a history of research on Britain’s underground rave scene (as well as Guinness and Premier League Football).

The Observatory, Handy continues, will “work out how people fizz with energy when they’re together and what this natural high is that’s created by many people being together. I think the more opportunities we have to keep building those worlds within Boomtown, we won’t just be seen as a dance festival.”

Boomtown refers to its festivalgoers as citizens, underlining this idea of the fest as a mini society in which people contribute, connect, learn (and perhaps encourages neighbourly behaviour as a nice bonus). Speaking of their audience, Handy says, “they really want that escapism, of reality but not as you know it, and we go into that in lots of brilliant ways. But we’re also cautious to do it properly, to look after people through that experience. We have that parallel with the real world, but we also have that opportunity to be a bit more radical in our thinking and encourage people to be a bit more radical, to take that back into their normal worlds.”

Speaking of taking things away, she tells me that, last year, 89% of people took their tents home, and they’re pushing for 90% this year. While she notes that this is still 10% – potentially as many as 7,000 people – who don’t bother, I can’t help thinking that most other festivals would have far more dire stats on this. “That ‘leave no trace’ message is still really important,” she says.

The website spells out Boomtown’s pledge to its citizens and the pledge it expects in return, including sustainable travel, water conservation, and the Eco Bond – a small fee included within the ticket price that is refunded if you drop off your recycling on the way out.

Besides tents and trash, there’s lots that Handy and Mitchell hope Boomtown citizens take away as they return to being citizens of The Real World. “An extra bit of motivation, or confidence, to connect one-to-one. To speak to that person next door to you on the bus that you might feel is a bit out of your comfort zone,” Mitchell says. “The IRL experience basically.” It’s funny that striking up a conversation with a stranger in a field can feel like the most natural thing in the world – your fledgling relationship comes pre-loaded with a shared interest – but such behaviour back home would seem at best novel, at worst diabolical.

“I’d hope that people leave Boomtown feeling more inspired to connect,” he continues, “because ultimately that’s the foundation of all the healing in the world.” It might just be crazy enough to work.