BLOODSTOCK OPEN AIR

Bloodstock knows exactly what it is.

• When: August

• Where: Catton Park, Walton-on-Trent, Derbyshire

• Founded: 2001 (Bloodstock Open Air launched in 2005)

• Type: Independent outdoor metal festival

• Camping: Yes

• Known for: A strongly metal-focused line-up, around 20,000 festival-goers, four stages, Metal 2 the Masses and the New Blood Stage

• Next festival: 5th–8th August 2027

• Tickets are available from the Bloodstock Festival website.

While other festivals spread their nets increasingly wide, Bloodstock remains proudly and unapologetically metal. Every August, around 20,000 metalheads descend on Catton Park in Derbyshire for four days of seriously heavy music and one of the friendliest atmospheres on the festival calendar.

Bloodstock started life as an indoor festival in 2001, before Bloodstock Open Air arrived in 2005. It’s since grown into the UK’s biggest independent metal festival, attracting major international artists without losing the sense that this is still a festival run by people who genuinely care about the scene they’re serving.

There’s less distance here between the festival, the bands and the people watching them. The site is compact, artists regularly mix with the crowd and bands that might disappear halfway down the bill elsewhere can feel like a genuinely big deal here.

Bloodstock also puts real effort into finding what comes next. Metal 2 the Masses gives unsigned and emerging bands a route from their local scene all the way to the New Blood Stage. For some, playing Bloodstock becomes a stepping stone to considerably bigger things.

But Bloodstock doesn’t take itself too seriously. Catton Park becomes a wonderfully peculiar little metal village for the weekend. Battle jackets everywhere, inflatable objects in unexpected places, conversations about bands you’ve never heard of and friendships formed in queues, campsites and bars. The music matters enormously - looking cool while enjoying it rather less so.

We’ll follow the line-up and the announcements, but we’re just as interested in what happens once everyone gets through the gates: the discoveries, the changes, the things that work, the things that don’t, and those moments that explain why people leave Catton Park already talking about coming back.

Whether Bloodstock is already your annual metal pilgrimage or you’re about to experience it for the first time, you’ll find all of Festpod’s coverage here.

Welcome to Bloodstock.