Press round-up / Escot Park, East Devon / 21–23 August 2026
Beautiful Days2026
What the press said
The Levellers’ festival sold out Escot Park again for its 23rd year. We read the reviews from Louder Than War, eFestivals, Under the Radar, God Is in the TV and East Devon News to find where the critics agreed, who they fell for, and what they made of the place itself.
The field at Escot
Under the Radar’s Lee Campbell had heard plenty about Beautiful Days but never been. He came away calling it “one of the most organic and authentic festivals in the world”, noting there’s still no major corporate branding or sponsorship on site. God Is in the TV’s Dave Roberts described the crowd as “a three-day collision of, somewhat ageing, punks, folkies, families”, and found a security guard happy to call it their favourite: “no hassle, everyone is just part of a community.”
John Robb at Louder Than War summed up the main stage bill as “old, new, borrowed and blue”, swinging between young bands “bringing their ruckus” and the “generational jukebox bands” everyone knows the words to. That split runs through every review, and the newer bands got at least as much ink as the veterans.
Part one
The ones everyone was talking about
01
Big Special
No band got a more consistent verdict. Robb calls the Midlands duo “perhaps the best band in the UK right now” and singles out Joe Hicklin’s voice, “one minute crooning, the next delivering a poem and the next ranting”, over Callum Moloney’s drums and electronics. Roberts went for “one of the most important bands of current times” and noted they’d impressed Madness enough to get a name-check from the stage later that night. eFestivals’ Kathryn Berry says they closed on ‘Shithouse’ and was glad to see them “moving up the bill”.
02
Nova Twins
Sunday afternoon on the main stage belonged to Nova Twins. Campbell says their “shuddering bassline and magnetic drumbeat” carried right across the site and called the set “pure knockout”. Robb placed them between metal, punk and “the smart end of Charli XCX pop”. The best reaction came from Berry, who’d seen the pair browsing the clothes stalls earlier but had never caught them live: “I was unprepared for how utterly cool they were ON the stage.”
03
“Like a dusty music-hall ghost troupe blinking into the modern light.”John Robb, Louder Than War, on Madness
Madness
Nobody doubted Saturday’s headliners, but each writer found their own way in. Robb’s picture of the band shuffling on “like a dusty music-hall ghost troupe blinking into the modern light” is the line of the weekend. Campbell had to push “through the melee of fez hat-wearing devotees” to reach the photo pit, and Roberts heard the field “lustily singing along in Suggs’ estuarine accent” to ‘Baggy Trousers’ and ‘Our House’. Berry reckons the crowd knew the words well enough to cover “the occasions that Suggs forgot the microphone was there.”
04
The Divine Comedy
Straight after Madness, Neil Hannon closed Saturday in a packed Big Top and supplied the weekend’s best anecdote. Roberts reports “the smartest-dressed roadie of the weekend” wheeling out a drinks trolley so Hannon could mix cocktails for the band mid-set, with that baritone “slicing through the Devon air with the precision of a surgical instrument”. Campbell heard the loudest cheer for the Father Ted theme, and Berry, who jogged over from the main stage, called it “sublime”.
05
The Wonder Stuff
Berry admits she expected The Wonder Stuff “to be okay” and “they did a lot better than that”, with Erica Nockalls on violin and an inflatable cow getting thrown around the crowd. Roberts said they “leaned hard into their early catalogue – exactly what this crowd wanted”, while Robb reckons the set bodes well for their October UK tour with Inspiral Carpets.
06
“Arguably their best performance in years.”John Robb, Louder Than War, on the Levellers
The Levellers
The hosts bookended the weekend, starting with the Levellers Collective, which Berry calls “the tradition that must never change”, and finishing on the main stage on Sunday night. Robb rated the closing set “arguably their best performance in years”. Campbell watched Jon Sevink spinning “like a whirling dervish” on fiddle, but found it was the slower songs that “hit the hardest”. The usual fireworks were called off because the ground was so dry, East Devon News reports. Roberts wasn’t bothered: “No fireworks this time, fair enough on this incendiary August.”
Part two
The split decision
Super Furry Animals, reunited after ten years away, split opinion on Friday. Robb enjoyed their “glorious eccentricity” and songs that change direction “in the blink of an eye”. Roberts found the set “foreboding”, good for fans who get the band’s humour but lost on anyone “dipping their toe in the water”, even with a sing-along of ‘The Man Don’t Give a Fuck’ to finish. Berry noticed the field thin out and guessed plenty had gone to see The Proclaimers in the Big Top instead.
Also getting a mention
Billy Bragg’s call to the “old geezers” in the crowd was picked up by both Roberts and Berry, who heard it as a plea to “support all our siblings in the fight for equality”; Roberts also rated his updated ‘Sexuality’. Skindred had the field twirling “slightly damp” jumpers for the Newport Helicopter. Richard Thompson impressed Campbell and Roberts in the Big Top, and Robb summed up Sunday’s Chameleons set in five words: “a classic band being classic.”
Part three
New names to watch
3 photos
Erotic Secrets of Pompeii
First on the main stage on Friday, and still pulled a big crowd down the hill in full sun. Robb describes them as “Suede if the glam-indie titans had a Cardiacs quirk”, with some early Adam and the Ants in the mix.
3 photos
Gurriers
The Dublin band won over both Robb and Campbell on Sunday. Robb says they’ve “made the post-IDLES and post-Fontaines D.C. space their own”. Campbell watched singer Dan Hoff drop into the crowd “like a tasmanian devil” while fans circled him, “almost waiting for a schoolyard scrap to break out”.
3 photos
Split Dogs
A punk rock ‘n’ roll four-piece fronted by Harry Atkins, whom Robb credits with a “charismatron presence”. His verdict: they “out-sniff Amyl and the Sniffers”.
3 photos
Snayx
Another Sunday main stage act that caught two writers’ attention. Berry heard “Prodigy vibes” and a reworking of ‘Breathe’ that got the pit moving; Robb liked the way they twist “punk-rock noise with hip-hop grooves”.
2 photos
Trampolene
Singer Jack Jones plays guitar for Pete Doherty in his day job, and Robb thinks he’s “an indie icon waiting to happen”.
2 photos
The Royston Club
The Wrexham band went down well enough on Saturday for Robb to say they’re “doing the Hollywood town of Wrexham proud”.
3 photos
Crystal Tides
Portsmouth’s “post-Arctic Monkeys indie-guitar hustlers”, as Robb puts it, and Berry spent their set bouncing.
2 photos
Flo Parker
Nick Parker’s daughter sang harmonies on her dad’s main stage set, then played the Bimble Inn herself. Berry marks her as “someone to watch for in future”.
Part four
Beyond the stages
Berry brought her 11-year-old this year and her review doubles as a family guide. The kids’ area staff made him so confident at circus skills that the family ended up buying a stack of circus equipment, and he rated the Theatre Tent too. Food averaged £13–14, beer about £6.50, and the rotisserie chicken queue got so long it blocked some of the stalls, so she’d like food and shopping kept apart next year. She also fell over “a chair or a hundred” at the front for the Levellers, ignoring the “no chairs beyond here after 7pm” signs.
East Devon News spent Sunday photographing the Back to the 70s fancy dress. Their haul included a man dressed as Concorde, the whole Scooby Doo gang with the Mystery Machine, a family of Rubik’s cubes, a gang of Rod Stewarts, the Test Card girl, the Smash robots, and Bungle, Zippy and George.
Roberts points out that politics is never far away at a festival named after a 17th-century radical movement, which has a stage called the Rebel Tent, though nobody is forced to listen. Campbell ended his review with a recommendation: “It remains a festival that you really should bask in at some point in your lifetime.” Anyone taking him up on it should be quick: East Devon News notes tickets always sell out fast.
In pictures
Seen from the field
Nobody at the Beautiful Days barrier sorts themselves by age. A grey-bearded bloke in a cowboy hat throws devil horns at a clear blue sky, and over in the Big Top a young lad is laughing along with the grown-ups either side of him. At night the front row of the main stage looked the same: silver-haired men and women in cowboy hats screaming the words back at the band. In the Little Big Top on Saturday the teenagers took over, waving glowsticks under a ceiling of inflatable smiley faces, one of them dressed head to toe as The Flash. Next to all that, an alien in a white boiler suit at the front hardly stood out.
On Sunday the site took the Back to the 70s theme seriously. We saw a man who’d come as Concorde, four Clangers, and Zippy, George and Bungle out for a stroll with their friends. There were two Smash Martians, John and Yoko in HAIR PEACE and BED PEACE nightshirts, and a family of Rubik’s cubes whose youngest had come as baby Yoda for reasons nobody explained. The Scooby Doo gang dragged a cardboard Mystery Machine, and one woman turned up as a telly showing the Test Card girl.
The heat never let up and the grass had turned to straw, so people coped however they could. We saw a towel draped over someone’s head at the barrier, and an older fella in a top hat stripped to the waist with glitter on his face and a can in his hand. It’s still a family festival at heart. Kids flew round on the chair swings, bubbles drifted past the Big Top, and a small girl in ear defenders held up a drawing with DADDY written across it. On Thursday, with the main stage still quiet, a dad stood in the empty arena with a baby asleep on his shoulder.
Even the people working it seemed to be enjoying themselves. A security guard grinned from his chair by the fence. A mural painter turned a blank wall into giant yellow flowers, then posed in front of it with a big crowd. A man in a paper crown carried a placard declaring himself “Good King Ron the First”.
And by the ferris wheel, a hand-painted sign summed the place up:
“Warning: hippies have been spotted in this area. Peace, love and understanding could break out at any moment.”
Gallery
More from the weekend
“It remains a festival that you really should bask in at some point in your lifetime.”Lee Campbell, Under the Radar
