In Photos: Gottwood Festival 2026

Gottwood celebrated a landmark 15th anniversary this year, rewarding its dedicated community with its first-ever 24-hour programme across Wales’ Carreglwyd Estate.

With its scenic setting on the north-west Welsh coastline, an intimate capacity that guarantees you’ll bump into a mate every few minutes, and a reliable round-the-clock programme this year’s edition of Gottwood the perfect playground for an early summer festival.

The heartbeat of the festival remained The Lawn, an idyllic stage set right on the bank of the site’s open water pond, looking like some alternate-universe Shrek’s swamp (if Shrek had an army of gardeners on retainer all year round). Highlight sets included live performances from Mathew Jonson and Freakenstein, plus a raucous show from alt-hip-hop six-piece Monster Florence.

The Lighthouse served as the perfect in-between spot in the late afternoon as the sun went down, with Robert Johnson resident Vera and Gabriels’ Ryan Hope taking things deeper into the night. Later, the Treehouse, Walled Garden and Trigon offered a heads-down, dirtier approach, with club favourites like Sonja Moonear, Binh, Roza Terenzi and Christian AB.

Elsewhere, the festival introduced the new Curve stage – a 360-degree immersive haystack that looked the part and delivered a zinger of a set from Samuel Deep, though it ran into some sound-consistency problems over the weekend.

Those teething problems were more than offset by IYKYK hidden gem Ricky’s Disco – a sweat-soaked tipi with a jaw-dropping lighting rig and intimate dancefloor that captured the feeling of stumbling into a small club at the perfect hour.

Likewise, the Barn offered something for the bass and 160 heads. It’s not often a 1600s Georgian country mansion meets Mala‘s earth-shattering dubs or Clarified Pace jumping on the mic to serenade the crowd with “who’s got a fat pussy” at 6am, but there’s a first for everything, and Gottwood seemed to be the place for it.

Look back on the festival in photos below.