Newquay Festival Lands in UK’s Top 10 Must-Visit List

There’s a festival just up the coast that’s pulling in nearly half a million Google searches a year, and it’s just been ranked among the ten best in the country.

Boardmasters, the surf and music festival held in Newquay, has been named in the top 10 ‘must-visit’ music festivals of summer 2026. The ranking comes from outdoor experts at GO Outdoors, who analysed the price, popularity and duration of music festivals across the UK to work out which ones are worth the trip this year.

Where Boardmasters landed

Boardmasters came in 5th place with a festival score of 9.48 out of 10. The Newquay event runs for five days, one of the longest stretches in the top 10, and camping is available. It carries a ticket price of £331.00 and is listed as family-friendly.

The festival also has a sizeable social media following, with 122,000 Instagram posts and 14,200 TikTok posts logged in the study. Annual Google searches for Boardmasters came in at 432,500. The one figure that might give campers pause is the average rainfall for the festival month, recorded at 75 mm.

The festivals that beat it

Topping the list is the Isle of Wight Festival, which scored 9.96 out of 10. It recorded 940,500 annual Google searches and runs from 18th to 21st June, with headliners including Lewis Capaldi, Calvin Harris and The Cure. Camping is available, it’s family-friendly, and the festival month sees average rainfall of 52 mm, one of the lowest figures in the top 10.

Second place went to Download Festival in Derby, scoring 9.87 out of 10. It has one of the strongest social footprints in the study, with 288,000 Instagram posts and 50,500 TikTok posts. Visitors can catch Limp Bizkit on the Friday, Guns N’ Roses on the Saturday and Linkin Park on the Sunday across its five-day run.

Rounding off the top three is BST Hyde Park in London, with 9.80 out of 10. Unlike the two festivals above it, BST Hyde Park doesn’t offer camping. At £84.95 it has a much lower ticket price, which the study suggests makes it a good option for music lovers on a budget. It also has a strong social presence, with 93,600 Instagram posts and 41,500 TikTok posts.

What else the study found

The research named Wilderness Festival in Oxford as the UK’s best outdoor festival. Alongside performances from the Scissor Sisters and Carl Cox, it has areas for yoga, meditation and comedy shows.

The study also noted that the majority of festivals in the top 10 are based in the south of England, which it says highlights the region’s pull for festival-goers, from major city day events to coastal and countryside camping weekends.