Black Deer Festival 2025 cancelled due to ongoing “pressures on the festival industry”

The Kent-based three-day Americana festival has said it intends to return in 2026

Black Deer Festival have announced they have postponed their 2025 event due to “financial and operational” pressures.

• READ MORE: Why have so many UK festivals been cancelled or postponed?

The three-day Kent festival is dedicated to Americana music and has been running for seven years, but will not run in 2025. Organisers have said that they intend to return in 2026, however, and their ‘Live & Radio’ strand will continue to promote shows around the country.

Organisers have said: “It is with a heavy heart that Black Deer Festival announces today that after seven wonderful years, its 2025 edition is postponed so we can prepare for our return as a Festival in 2026. Black Deer Live & Radio will continue to expand upon its successful launch earlier this year, bringing Black Deer and Americana to the length and breadth of the UK.”

“Black Deer Festival 2023 & 2024 have both proved significantly difficult both financially and operationally, with unpredictable ticket sales and ever rising production costs, given the general economic conditions,” they continued. “The strain on our independently funded festival has taken a toll and despite all our best efforts, the landscape continues to prove challenging and has forced us to postpone our festival next year.”

Chris Russell-Fish, managing director of Black Deer Group, added: “Regretfully, due to the widely reported pressures on the festival industry, we have taken the difficult decision to postpone Black Deer Festival 2025. This is not a decision we’ve made lightly. We have explored all avenues to try to make it work next summer, but right now it just isn’t feasible. We are immensely thankful for our audience, who come back year-on-year to discover and enjoy the brilliance that is Americana, which is why in June 2024, we launched Black Deer Live & Black Deer Radio to support our huge, growing community.”

The 2024 Black Deer Festival took place in June and featured sets from the likes of Sheryl Crow, Courtney Barnett, The Staves and Seasick Steve.

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News of the cancellation comes after it was recently reported that as many as 72 UK festivals were cancelled or postponed in 2024, doubling the number from the previous year.

The Association of Independent Festivals (AIF) added that including the 96 events that were lost during the COVID pandemic, it is a total of 204 festivals that have now disappeared since 2019.

By March this year, 21 UK festivals had already been cancelled, postponed or scrapped, including Nozstock Hidden Valley who announced in December that 2024 would be their final incarnation after 26 years due to “soaring costs” and financial risk”.

Elsewhere, the Shepton Mallet skating and music festival NASS announced that they wouldn’t be putting on an event this summer either as it was “just not economically feasible to continue”. Bluedot announced a year off for the land to “desperately” recover after being struck by heavy rain and cancellations last summer, and, in April, PennFest cancelled their 2024 festival due to a “challenging economic climate”.

AIF’s CEO John Rostron called 2024 a “devastating period” for festival organisers in the UK. “The festival sector generates significant revenue in and around local economies as well as to the Treasury every year,” he added. “We have campaigned tirelessly for targeted, temporary government intervention which, evidence shows, would have saved most of the independent events that have fallen in 2024.”

Speaking to NME about the cancellation and postponement of various music festivals, Oscar Matthews, co-owner of Barn On The Farm festival, shared: “It’s inevitable and it’s already started, but when you start to lose smaller festivals, events, gig spaces and venues, the opportunities disappear for new and emerging talent to get on stage and get their music heard. They’ll suffer and that will inevitably have a knock-on effect further up the chain.”

It follows recent findings that the music industry contributed a record £7.6billion to the country’s economy in 2023, while the grassroots sector continues to struggle.

In hopes of securing a future for live music, the government recently backed a levy on gigs at arena level that will see the UK’s smaller venues, festivals, rising artists and promoters receive a contribution from bigger gigs.

The model, similar to the one seen in the Premiere League of football and already in use in several countries across Europe, was recommended by MPs after a DCMS investigation back in Spring.

Though the idea has already been adopted by major artists like Coldplay, Enter Shikari, Sam Fender and most recently Katy Perry, the music industry is yet to act, leading to increased calls for a clear deadline for urgent action to be taken.