UK festivals where nobody is drinking: the ones I have played, and what the floors are like

There are plenty of lists of sober festivals in the UK. As far as I can tell none of them is written by anyone who has played one, so they tell you about the yoga and the food and not about the thing you are actually going for, which is the dancefloor. This is that list. It only includes festivals I have played or been to, it says so when I do not know something, and I update it each year as the circuit changes.

Soul Revolution Festival

Where and when. Weston Park, Shifnal, on the Staffordshire and Shropshire border. Late May.

Drinking. None. No alcohol and no substances on site, and it is built for families, so there are children everywhere, including on the dancefloor.

The floor. I have played it three years running: the official closing set in 2024, a New Year’s Day set for them at the start of 2025, and 2026 with Amelia Yawanawá on stage. It is the floor I know best. Daylight for most of it, a tent that fills from the middle, and a crowd that has come specifically to dance sober, so nobody needs convincing that it is possible. The closing set is the last set of the whole festival, which is a particular job and I have written about it separately.

Hear it. The 2024 closing set and the 2025 New Year’s Day set are both on the mixes page.

Oh Shala Bakti Festival

Where and when. Penn, Buckinghamshire. July.

Drinking. I will put the bar policy here once I have checked it, rather than guess.

The floor. Resident since 2025. The set I played there in 2025 is the one I point people at when they ask what a long afternoon sounds like, because it goes from tribal fusion through the ecstatic dance stretch into drum and bass and back. That range is the room’s doing as much as mine. It is a floor that will follow you a long way if you have earned it in the first hour.

Hear it. The full 2025 set is on YouTube and on the mixes page.

Tribes of Beorma

Where and when. The Malvern Hills, plus an indoor edition called INNERCITY at Eighteen Clubspace.

Drinking. Same again: the confirmed policy goes here, not a guess.

The floor. Resident since 2024. The fifth one has a recording, an hour from six until seven in the evening, that the host put up on his own SoundCloud rather than mine. Early evening in the hills is its own light and its own crowd.

Hear it. The Tribes of Beorma 5 recording is on the mixes page.

Ones I have played that are not sober festivals

Noisily, in Leicestershire woodland, in 2024, and UKTTA in Birmingham in 2025, which is a tattoo convention and a completely different room. I include them so this list is honest about where I have been, not to suggest they belong on it.

The one everyone names that I have not played

Medicine Festival, at Wasing in Berkshire, in August, bills itself as the biggest alcohol-free camping festival in the country and is the one people mean when they say the scene has gone mainstream. I have not played it. When I have, it goes on the list.

What they have in common

Daylight. Children. Floors that fill from the middle. Nobody needing to be talked into it. And a particular thing that happens in the second hour of a good set that I have never once seen at a festival with a bar, which is a room full of adults dancing like nobody is watching because, for once, nobody is.