About Reading Festival
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About Reading Festival
The Reading and Leeds Festivals are a pair of annual music festivals that take place in Reading and Leeds in England and are run by Festival Republic. The events both happen on the bank holiday weekend in August (on Friday, Saturday, Sunday), and share the same bill (usually with one or two exceptions). Between 1998 and 2007 the dual festivals were known officially as the "Carling Weekend" until parting ways with their sponsor Carling in November 2007.
Reading festival has had various musical phases, as detailed below. In the twin-site era, rock/alternative/indie/punk/metal have tended to dominate. The festival typically has the following stages:-
- Main stage - major rock/indie/alternative acts
- NME/Radio 1 stage - less well-known acts, building up to an alternative headline act
- Carling stage - acts with less popular appeal and breakthrough acts
- Radio 1 Lock Up Stage - underground punk/hardcore acts. Due to demand, from 2006 this stage took up 2 days rather than previous years where it was only 1 day.
- Dance tent - dance music acts, on the day that the above stage does not run
- Alternative tent - comedy and cabaret acts plus DJs.
- TopMan Unsigned stage - Unsigned acts from the local area (Leeds only)
The festivals are run by Festival Republic, which was divested from Mean Fiddler Music Group. For promotional purposes during 1998-2007 they were known as the Carling Weekend: Reading and the Carling Weekend: Leeds. Unsurprisingly, these titles were seldom used when not required, although NME did so as part of its involvement. In 2007, the organisers welcomed "Reading Festival reclaiming its prestigious name" when the sponsored title was abolished.
In 2007 the capacity of the Reading site was 80,000 and the Leeds site was 70,000. This was an increase of several thousand on previous years[9] The Reading festival is held at Little John's Farm on Richfield Avenue in central Reading, near the Caversham Bridge. The Leeds event is held in Bramham Park, the grounds of a historic house. Campsites are available at both sites and weekend tickets include free camping. Day tickets are also sold.