Bloodstock’s Rachael Greenfield on 25 years: ‘We wear our heart on our sleeve’
Bloodstock 2026 hadn’tt even finished when Rachael Greenfield and her team were already travelling around Catton Park in a buggy, looking for changes they could make for 2027.
It’s probably the neatest way to sum up the family-run festival. Finish one event, listen to the people who attended it, then start improving the next one.
Speaking to Festpod’s Neill Wilkinson and Arran Prime during Bloodstock’s 25th-anniversary weekend, Greenfield described the 2026 edition as “phenomenal”.
“For me, so far, it’s been everything we’ve wanted it to be,” she said, crediting the festival-goers, crew, security and wider team behind the event.
A family festival, literally
Greenfield runs Bloodstock with her brother Adam Gregory, sister Vicky Hungerford and father Paul Gregory. That does not mean 25 years of perfect harmony.
“It’s a privilege that I get to work with my brother and my sister and my dad,” she said. “We’ve had our moments. We’re very forgiving of each other, and that’s why we’re still here.”
There was no master plan when the family began building Bloodstock.
“We didn’t know what we were doing 25 years ago,” Greenfield said. “It was a roll of the dice. We were having fun.”
The fun came with a hell of a learning curve, and very little immediate financial reward.
Fourteen years to break even
“It took us to get to 14 years before we actually broke even,” Greenfield said. “Fourteen years of doing something not because of the money - because there wasn’t any.”
Instead, the reward was the event weekend itself. Seeing the site fill, hearing the response from fans and realising what the family and its team had created. That belief also explains why independence remains central to Bloodstock.
“It’s been really challenging to retain that ownership because, obviously, times have been very difficult in the industry, especially post-pandemic,” Greenfield said.
Independence means accepting responsibility, as well as keeping control.
“I suppose what sets an independent festival apart is multi-layered,” she said. “We’re independent, firstly, so the buck stops with us. If anything goes wrong, we do take it personally.”
It also lets the team respond, learn and make changes without waiting for a distant corporate structure.
“We can turn things around and we can learn and improve,” Greenfield added. “That’s what we’ve always been about.”
Her preferred approach is openness, even when it gets uncomfortable.
“We try to be very, very sincere with everybody, very transparent, maybe too transparent sometimes,” she said. “We wear our heart on our sleeve.”
‘We were with our people again’
Asked to choose one defining moment from Bloodstock’s first 25 years, Greenfield returned to the festival’s first edition after the pandemic.
She recalled watching the event team’s footage of the gates reopening, the crowds arriving and people being together again. The emotion caught up with her in the festival office.
“I remember sitting in there and I cried,” she said. “The emotion was overwhelming. We were with people again. We were with our people.”
Feedback you can see
As well as attending Bloodstock, the community helps to shape it.
Greenfield said changes to the festival site are grounded in the feedback the team receives. The fairground was removed after fans reported sound bleeding into the Sophie Lancaster Stage. For 2026, the EMP Stage was moved to the perimeter and enlarged, opening up the arena and giving festival-goers more space.
“For us, this is all about the feedback that we get,” she said.
The process continues while the festival is live. Staff trawl social media for reports of problems around the site, allowing issues involving showers, campsites or accessibility to be passed to event control quickly.
“If something with accessibility isn’t working for whatever reason, because we’ve tried something new - in real time, OK, it didn’t work yesterday, let’s change it today,” Greenfield said.
Representatives from across the site also meet throughout the day. The instruction to staff and volunteers is clear - “No matter how small, let’s talk about it now. Let’s not leave it until after the festival.”
A crowd that stepped back
Greenfield also recalled a brief main-stage stoppage after an audience member became unwell. Messaging on the screens asked the crowd to move back so medics could reach them.
The response was immediate.
“All the fans self-policed and just stepped back,” she said. “The medics came straight in, pulled this person out and we carried on.”
An experienced event controller told the Bloodstock team she had rarely seen a crowd react so quickly and calmly.
“She hadn’t seen something as responsive as that,” Greenfield said. “And that’s our fans.”
It was the community that Greenfield had been describing all along, made visible in a crucial moment.
Bloodstock 2027 is already moving
Even before the anniversary weekend had ended, the next event was being actively planned..
“We’ve already been round in our little buggy and looked at where we can tweak the site and some changes that we can make,” Greenfield said. “It’s all about improvements.”
Her invitation to anyone still wondering if Bloodstock is for them was simple.
“Just try it. Try it for a day. Just come for a day,” she said. “We pretty much guarantee you’ll come back.”
By then, the buggy laps had started and the next round of improvements was already in motion. Bloodstock, it seems, doesn't stay still for long.
Bloodstock Open Air 2027 takes place at Catton Park, Derbyshire, from the 5th–8th August 2027, with Mercyful Fate, Electric Callboy and Motionless In White confirmed as Ronnie James Dio Stage headliners. Visit the official Bloodstock website for tickets and updates.
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