Nottingham's Splendour Festival prepares for its final weekend
Organisers say rising costs and a tougher festival market have made the long-running Wollaton Park event unsustainable.
Sophie Bennett
Writer ·

Nottingham's Splendour Festival is preparing for its final weekend after organisers said rising costs and a tougher festival market had made the long-running event unsustainable.
The farewell edition at Wollaton Park is being framed as a celebration of nearly two decades of live music in the city.
A squeezed sector
Splendour joins a growing list of UK festivals struggling with mounting production costs, tighter margins and shifting audience habits. For many independent events, the economics of staging large outdoor shows have become increasingly difficult.
What happens next
Organisers say the closing weekend will honour the festival's history and the local audience that sustained it. Its end leaves a gap in the East Midlands live-music calendar and adds to wider concern about the future of mid-sized festivals.
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