Boomtown Fair co-founder Luke Mitchell has confirmed that the Hampshire festival has been given the go-ahead to expand its capacity from 65,999 to 76,999.

“The model is quite simple,” said Mitchell, “It means there will be more space in all the venues, and there’s more budget to play with. We are sold out, and there’s huge numbers on the waiting list too, so we’re in a really good place.”

Having successfully maintained its license following a review triggered by Hampshire Constabulary in response to the death of a 22-year-old man at the event last year, the festival has now been given the green light to grow its daily capacity by nearly 17%.

With 12 main stages, and more than 50 ‘hidden venues’, along with thousands of performers, Boomtown will take place at its longtime home of Matterley Estate, from 10-15 August. Among the diverse array of acts set to perform are Maribou State, Sex Pistols and Sean Paul.

The capacity extension was included in a planning application to the South Downs National Park Authority that promised 1,000 Sunday tickets would be reserved for the local community, and the event would deliver a 10% biodiversity net gain for the Matterley Estate, where organisers of the event, which is part owned by Live Nation, have applied to stage it for the next five years.

Boomtown Fair will this year include a new stage powered entirely by hydrogen. The event team has partnered with Hydrologiq to create the new ‘HYDRO’ stage, which will be powered by Hydrogen fuel cell generators that produce clean, emission-free electricity, only emitting water vapour as a by-product. organisers said the partnership with Hydrologiq has been formed with the aim of lowering supply chain CO2e emissions and reduce local and on-site emissions.

Luke Mitchell takes Access All Areas on site for an AAA Backstage podcast interview that finds him talking about the challenges and rewards of running the event, and what led up to him creating it. Watch it here…

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