Festivals and events
Brighton has an incredibly eclectic calander of festivals throughout the year, celebrating myriad different aspects of local life and the city's creative talents and interests.
Photo: Bodies in Urban Spaces, Brighton Festival 2010, Matthew Andrews
One of the UK's largest science events, with exhibitions, debates & performance at venues all over the city.
Winter gay festival with nine days of events across the city staged by businesses and community groups.
Marking the Spring Harvest, the Food & Drink festival is the showcase for local produce, restaurants, breweries and wine producers. Features The Big Sussex Market on New Road, the Champagne & Local Sparkling Wine Festival at Hotel du Vin and Brighton & Hove Restaurant Week.
This massive annual festival of arts & performance runs for three weeks and attracts over 300 hundreds of thousands of people to shows all over the city. The Festival started in 1967 and commissions a wide range of original work.
The largest open-access arts festival in England, the Fringe is the umbrella for an eclectic range of artistic expression. Anyone can put on a show practically anywhere, indoors or out. Expect creative improvisation and a measure of pyrotechnics Unmissable experience.
For four weekends, local artists exhibit their works in their own homes, as well as pubs and other non-traditional spaces. In 2010, over 240 venues hosted the work of over 1,300 artists and craftspeople. Check out the works and the artist’s home décor at the same time!
Convention and showcase music festival for up and coming bands. Live performance and serious debate on the music business. Over 300 new local and international artists playing dozens of local venues.
Photo: Turbowolf
Reflecting the city’s cultivation of creativity and free expression, Fashion Week
showcases the work of over 60 local and international up-and-coming designers. This series of shows, workshops, exhibitions and installations promotes the counterculture and a ‘dare to be you’ attitude. Endorsed by fashion ‘front rowers’ such as Karen Millen and Zoë Ball.
“Celebrating bikes and body power, demonstrating cyclists' vulnerability and protesting against the dominance of cars and the pollution they cause”. Brighton’s leg of the World Naked Bike Ride drew nearly 1,000 participants last year. The ride promotes cycling as a fun and environmentally positive alternative to driving. Don’t forget your sunblock! Photo: Jamie McCartney, Brighton Body Casting
The Carnival is “one big, loud and exciting day in celebration of everyone who makes up Brighton & Hove”. Masquerade, music and dance, costume and food.
Massive party in the park and parade celebrating LGBT communities in Brighton. Thousands come down from London for a weekend of partying in Preston Park that spills out later to the streets and clubs.
Local produce, international flavours. “A celebration of the best food and drink to be found in the city & wider Sussex, with producers, restaurants, pubs, bars, retailers, markets & great events.”
Europe's biggest extreme sports festival - on the beach! BMX, Skate, Mountain Board, Inline, Streetboard, Mtn Bike, Parkour, Street Dance, Martial Arts, and every crazy, gravity-defying sport you can imagine.
An opportunity for the public to buy art from the best local and national artists, including painters, printmakers, photographers and sculptors along with artist groups and Sussex-based galleries.
Five days of free music events across the city with nearly 20 venues showcasing 150 local bands.
All-night cultural festival to mark the end of British Summer Time. “A magical evening where things are not always quite as they seem.” Highly recommended.
“Courtship and marriage, religion and customs, living, dying and remembering, eating, drinking, revelry and the seasons – ‘ritual’ celebrated in music from antiquity to the present.”
A weekend of non-stop choral events in collaboration with Making Music South East. “Sing Brighton! is an initiative aimed at encouraging more singing in the region, and specifically the singing of high quality music that reflects European traditions over several hundreds of years.”
“A Lewes tradition going back many years that allows the people of the town to celebrate the ancient tradition of Bonfire.” The evening starts with a parade and costume competition followed by massive firework displays. Pagan, anti-catholic (an effigy of the Pope is burned), or an excuse for pyrotechnic mayhem? Imagine the Fallas fireworks fiesta of Valencia, but all in one night!
The annual Brighton Film Festival held at the historic Duke of York’s Picture House, the city’s only independent cinema.
Running for three weekends, the Christmas open house season follows the same format as the events in May. Local artists and craftspeople exhibit their works in their own homes, pubs and other non-traditional spaces. Great opportunity to find unique Christmas presents!
More pyrotechnics in December with the celebration of the winter equinox. “Burning the Clocks is an antidote to the excesses of the commercial Christmas. People gather to make paper and willow lanterns to carry through their city and burn on the beach as a token for the end of the year.” Family solstice parade followed by high quality fire show and fireworks for the whole city.