Wedmore Festival 2026

Wedmore Festival 2026 has already passed into local legend—somewhere between Glastonbury (without the mud) and a particularly ambitious church fête (with better wine).

For nine glorious days, the village was positively humming with events in the village hall and St Mary’s Church. You couldn’t be at the village hall or  St.Mary’s Church without bumping into a poet, a quartet, or someone explaining modern art with great conviction. The programme offered everything from major personalities the likes of Professor Alice Roberts, poet and author Lemn Sissay, world class improv artists Marcus Brigstocke and Rachel Parris, together with a stirring classical performance fromWedmore Ensemble.  And Bootleg Blondie were a blast from the past!

All that interspersed with lunchtime talks that made us all feel just slightly more intelligent & knowledgeable than we were the week before.  And those on who went on Matt Witt’s tree walk, now know a lot more about trees in Wedmore!

And of course, the Festival’s wonderful, and expertly organised and displayed, Exhibition of local artistic and creative talent displayed over the Festival week in St. Mary’s Church.  All this from local artists and also students from Hugh Sexey Middle School as well as competition winners from the South West Lions Clubs

The Festival Bar team deserves special mention for fuelling both audiences and performers with heroic quantities of wine and beer. Some attendees are believed to have visited purely for “research purposes.”

Most impressive of all was the sheer number of volunteers, who made the whole thing run so smoothly it almost looked effortless—though we know better.

Thank you to Sophie and her team at Wedmore Village Stores for managing local ticket sales with such ease and to St. Mary’s Church and Wedmore village hall for their venues. And to the Friends of Wedmore Festival who continue to support us financially.

In short: a splendid success, a credit to Wedmore, and a very good excuse to do it all again next year to enable Wedmore Festival to continue its local support for both performing protégées and bringing world class educational events to local schools.

And finally, thank you to all of you – our loyal audiences!