Ga onbeperkt met Magzter GOLD
Krijg onbeperkte toegang tot meer dan 9000 tijdschriften, kranten en Premium-verhalen voor slechts
Poging GOUD - Vrij
When the music stops Smaller festivals felled by rising costs
The Guardian
|June 13, 2026
Hosting Scotland’s first Womad festival seemed like an easy sell for Glasgow, the country’s gig capital and self-proclaimed “dynamic global hub for music lovers”.
However, last week the internationally renowned event celebrating performance from around the world, staged in 30 countries since being co-founded by the former Genesis frontman Peter Gabriel in 1982, was cancelled because of low ticket sales.
It is the 20th casualty so far this year as small and independent festival operators enter another tough summer facing a myriad of challenges, from belt-tightening consumers becoming more picky about how they spend their cash, to soaring energy and labour costs and competition from deep-pocketed industry heavyweights.
“Independent festival organisers basically eat and drink risk,” said Jon Collins, the chief executive of Live, the body that represents the UK’s live music industry.
“A year ahead they have to commit to a huge amount of cost to get it all booked in, and then have to believe they will sell enough tickets to deliver it, and hopefully make a small profit at the end of it. It is hard, there are far easier ways to make money, but they love it.”
Secret Garden Party, which featured acts from Ed Sheeran to Clean Bandit and attracted Prince Harry as a partygoer in 2014, shut down at the end of its 2024 event with a symbolic burning of the main stage, after its founder said it was “no longer sustainable for independents to run festivals”.
This year the dream of the team at Chai Wallahs, the touring festival live venue collective, to hold an event on the same site in Cambridgeshire also failed.
Dit verhaal komt uit de June 13, 2026-editie van The Guardian.
Abonneer u op Magzter GOLD voor toegang tot duizenden zorgvuldig samengestelde premiumverhalen en meer dan 9000 tijdschriften en kranten.
Bent u al abonnee? Aanmelden
MEER VERHALEN VAN The Guardian
The Guardian
Scotland Triumph and trepidation infuse return to World Cup
Scotland is leaning into one of its most treasured traditions: embracing the hope and anxiety of a football World Cup, with a healthy dose of self-deprecating style.
2 mins
June 13, 2026
The Guardian
Violence in Belfast and Southampton has stirred fear and racism throughout the country as police struggle to get a grip on mobs Has unrest become the new normal?
As the people of Glengormley, on the northern edge of Belfast, tidied up and prepared for more violence in the midst of what has been described as a modern-day pogrom, a court 500 miles away in Southampton started to deal with its own outbreak of thuggery.
6 mins
June 13, 2026
The Guardian
Pure visual joy Hockney changed the world just by looking at it
David Hockney changed the world just by looking at it. His art was a feast of unabashed visual pleasure, one long orgy of the gaze, the delighted lifelong epiphany of someone who cherished flowers in a vase and freeways in the sun and thought endlessly about new ways of capturing such passing treasures.
4 mins
June 13, 2026
The Guardian
'Beware a vacuum' Why paramilitaries in Belfast decided not to stop the violence
As racist rioting unfolded in Northern Ireland this week, there was a striking dissonance behind the mobs and flames.
4 mins
June 13, 2026
The Guardian
Playing on enemy soil The tug of war facing Iran’s World Cup squad in the US
Iran will present a full-on challenge to Fifa’s “football unites the world” slogan next week by becoming the first country in World Cup history to compete on the soil of a host nation with which it is at war.
3 mins
June 13, 2026
The Guardian
Betfair owner delists from London market
The gambling group that owns Paddy Power and Betfair is to scrap its listing on the London Stock Exchange, in another blow for Britain’s shrinking stock market.
1 min
June 13, 2026
The Guardian
The World Cup bonus What late opening hours could mean for pubs and drinkers
Keir Starmer may have imagined a national morale-boosting programme when his government told hospitality venues that they could stay open until 2am on some World Cup match days, to allow for the time difference with the US, Mexico and Canada, the tournament’s co-hosts, which means many England and Scotland games kick off at night.
4 mins
June 13, 2026
The Guardian
The bee crisis Hidden health costs of world’s disappearing pollinators
There are few ways in and out of Nepal’s Jumla district. The Karnali highway, one of the world’s most dangerous roads, provides the only land link, splicing through the Himalayas to connect Jumla’s terraced valleys to the rest of the country.
3 mins
June 13, 2026
The Guardian
$960 for Keaton nail clippers? The boom in selling off dead celebrities' personal items
From Diane Keaton’s bowler hats and polka dot scarfs, to Gene Hackman’s used paint brushes, to Terence Stamp’s love letters from Jean Shrimpton and even Matthew Perry’s black leather wallet (his credit cards still inside), fans are being offered - for a price - increasingly personal items from the estates of dead celebrities.
3 mins
June 13, 2026
The Guardian
Trees may not store as much carbon as thought
Trees may not be able to store as much planet-heating carbon as hoped, a new study suggests, with researchers finding photosynthesis does not always lead to wood growth.
1 min
June 13, 2026
Listen
Translate
Change font size