Secret report reveals reason why Cambridge Folk Festival was cancelled
City councillors were told in a secret briefing that holding the Cambridge Folk Festival was “not sustainable” this year after the previous event lost £322,000, the Cambridge Independent can reveal.
The 2025 festival, which was due to celebrate its 60th anniversary, was suddenly cancelled by Cambridge City Council last week without explanation, leaving many fans out of pocket for flights and accommodation already booked. It is due to return next year.
The Cambridge Independent has seen a report circulated to Labour city councillors that revealed the huge losses sustained by the festival and showed that council officers had suggested four options this year.
Councillors were told they could choose to go ahead with the event, cancel it permanently, hold an evening-only general music festival without camping or have a “fallow year”, bringing the festival back in 2026, according to officers.
Liberal Democrat city councillors, who say they were kept in the dark about the proposal to cancel this year’s festival, have demanded an extraordinary meeting of the council committee that oversees arts and leisure in Cambridge to review last week’s “bombshell” announcement, which gave no explanation for the decision. Headlined ‘Cambridge Folk Festival to return in 2026’, the announcement featured no direct reference to this year’s cancellation, except for a line stating that those who had already purchased 2025 tickets would be contacted directly.
Cllr Cheney Payne (Lib Dem, Castle) said: “Amid all the dismay at the cancellation, the council has been notably evasive. They scheduled their announcement straight after the relevant committee met last week, so its members weren’t aware and it couldn’t be talked about. Their statement the day afterwards couldn’t even admit in straight terms that the festival was being cancelled. No explanation has been provided - it’s just being treated as something the public has to suck up as if we’re all stupid.
“We’re calling this special meeting to bring things out into the open - where they should be on a matter of great local concern. It’s wrong that a group of Labour councillors can OK such decisions behind the scenes, with no-one else’s say about it whatsoever.
“The city has recently seen big annual cultural events dropping like nine pins: the Big Weekend, Strawberry Fair - and now the Folk Festival - and the council itself is responsible for two of these three. To lose access to top flight international performers and the magical creative mix with local artists is to lose something quite unique. The Folk Festival is that unusual event for which Cambridge is known nationally and round the world which has nothing to do with our two universities. This leaves a huge hole in the arts calendar of the city and will also impact the city economy.
“The council’s evasive behaviour understandably raises many suspicions. With the 2025 festival advertised and advance tickets sold out many months ago: something must be amiss. How could a normally profitable event like this not be possible to continue?
“Why was an announcement only made at a point that this year’s festival would anyway be impossible to organise so that it had to be a fait accompli? If there are good answers, we must all hear them. If there aren’t, many many people will want to know why.”
They have written to Cambridge City Council chief executive Robert Pollock to ask:
- Who was involved in taking the decision and the legitimacy of it in relation to the council’s constitution;
- When relevant evidence became available, when cancellation was first mooted and when normal preparatory steps for the festival, including booking of artists, were suspended;
- The options considered before making the decision to cancel;
- Costs and savings to the council associated with the cancellation in 2024-25 and 2025-26 and the estimated impact on the local economy;
- Why the decision was held back until directly after the relevant scrutiny committee had held its meeting last week (16th January) and, even after that, not communicated to the public in clear terms as a cancellation;
- The financial performance of the 2024 Folk Festival and audience feedback; and
- The proposed budget for alternative events in 2025 and the emerging vision beyond that for a continuing festival in the local and national calendar which enables a creative mix of top flight international and local performers.
Some of these question are answered in the secret report, seen by the Cambridge Independent. In it, council officers explain that there has been a 30 per cent drop in ticket sales over the past five years alongside a corresponding 32.9 per cent rise in infrastructure costs, where the standard inflationary increase over five years would have been 18 per cent.
They add: “In 2024 around 7,000 tickets were sold, compared to an average of over 10,000 before Covid. Ticket sales pre-Covid had much higher weekend sales. In addition, in 2024, there was a drop-off in Sunday purchases due to programme scheduling. There was also a drop in merchandise profits and caterer and trader income. This drop in expected income resulted in a net cost to the festival of up to £322,000.”
Each of the options presented by officers would entail some costs. They estimated that permanently ceasing the festival would cost the local economy £2.5million annually.
The second option was to continue with the festival as usual but scale it back to three days. This would leave the council with £200,000 in losses and risked “alienation of audiences” by offering a lesser experience.
The third option was to have a “fallow year” and cancel the festival for 2025 but return in 2026. Officers said the cost would be “£150,000 for existing salaries and external advice, investment into research and review work, and operations during the fallow year”.
They also warned there was a risk of “potential backlash if poorly communicated”.
Option four was an interim event that was a “significantly scaled-back and simplified mixed programme event, with a single stage and evening programming”.
This had the potential to bring in some money, said the officers, but could put the future of the Folk festival at risk as it would be “more challenging to create space to review and relaunch the festival in 2026”.
Broadcaster Mandy Morton, who reports on the festival every year and carries out backstage interviews, said it was very clear that a lack of major headline stars in recent years has caused ticket sales to drop off.
She said: “As a broadcaster and somebody that has created programmes there for over 30 years, I think that it is such a shame that a family festival like the Cambridge Folk Festival should disappear, even just for one year. And I have to say that the line-up over the last two or three years has been far from the sort of things that we used to expect from Cambridge.
“I don’t think it’s the eclectic side of the music that’s the problem. It is down to the sort of people that they have been booking over the last few years. If you’re going to spend a weekend somewhere, you really want to get excited about what’s happening on those stages, rather than just sort of sitting in the middle of the field having a hot dog. Cambridge is prestigious. Every artist I’ve ever interviewed there has always said that if you’ve got Cambridge on your CV, it’s a huge accolade. And I think that is fast disappearing. It’s a tragedy.
“A lot of small festivals have sprung up over the last few years, which I think is lovely. It gives an opportunity for perhaps less and lesser-known artists to play. But Cambridge needs to keep its prestige. It needs to have the big names such as the country-folk crossovers from America, which Eddie Barcan when he was booking out the festival, always used to entertain.
“I mean people like Mary Chapin Carpenter, Suzanne Vega, all those names, have been missing, and they need to come back again to actually make people put their hands in their pockets and pay for something that is not a cheap weekend anymore.
“With this festival going and the Big Weekend and the Arts Theatre closing for a year, Cambridge is in danger of becoming a cultural desert.”
A former folk festival insider told the Cambridge Independent that they were aware of internal analysis of the festival’s line-ups in recent years against new festivals, such as Wickham festival in Hampshire. The individual said the other festivals had better known headline acts and were cheaper than the Cambridge Folk Festival.
Cherry Hinton Hall, the folk festival’s location, falls in the ward of Cllr Rob Dryden (Lab, Cherry Hinton).
Speaking of his dismay about the cancellation, he said: “My questions were that, if they were losing money, we would have known straight after the last festival. Why did they wait until January before they announced it? I did have concerns before for that. Somebody from the Manchester area told me that the festival was off, but that was before Christmas. Their reasoning was that normally when you have a festival, they start announcing the acts in September, and then they tell you every week when they secure a new artist.
“But that didn’t happen in Cambridge, so I think the alarm bell should have been ringing long before it was told to us. Why haven’t we been looking at artists, especially with it being the 60th festival as well. I’ve suggested that if we had known about it a bit earlier, we could have got a festival. Perhaps not as big, but we could have still put something on, even if it was the size of a regional festival. At least we could have celebrated the 60th anniversary.”
A Cambridge City Council spokesperson said: “2024 proved to be a challenging year for independent festivals, with many facing tough decisions. While the Cambridge Folk Festival’s legacy remains strong, we’re committed to seeing it back again even stronger in 2026.
“This year the council will hold a free family-friendly concert, celebrating local folk artists and will be held at Cherry Hinton Hall in August, as well as a series of venue-based concerts and other initiatives to support local emerging youth and folk artists.
“Available resources will be invested in the long-term development of the festival to ensure its success and financial sustainability. Like many others, the Folk Festival will need to evolve to ensure it can thrive for future generations.”
There has been concern that so many major events have been cancelled. In 2023, the council cancelled the free Big Weekend concert due to costs. Strawberry Fair organisers announced last month that an “unsustainable deficit” meant it would not happen in 2025 and The Cambridge Club Festival organisers have also ended their annual event.
The council spokesperson added: “The council has no plans to cancel other cultural events this year, including the fireworks. In fact, as a result of this we plan to put on more music events this summer. This is a commercial and operational decision taken in the best interest of the Folk Festival, which has been backed by council leaders.
“Customers who have already purchased Early Bird tickets for 2025, have been contacted and offered the choice of a refund or to hold onto their tickets for the 2026 festival.
“The festival is a much-loved summer highlight for many local people which also attracts national and international audiences due to its reputation as one of the longest running and most prestigious folk festivals in the world, and continues to attract global artists from all around the world including Robert Plant, Joan Baez, James Taylor, Van Morrison, Nick Cave, Lady Blackbird, Peggy Seeger and Suzanne Vega, the festival regularly acts as a launch pad for many emerging artists such as Frank Turner, Passenger, Jake Bugg and First Aid Kit.”
The council would not comment on how much the festival had lost, as it said this was “commercially sensitive” information.
