Organisers have cancelled the debut edition of WOMAD Glasgow citing lower than necessary ticket sales.

The first WOMAD (World of Music, Arts and Dance) festival in Scotland was due to take place from 3-4 July at Kelvingrove Park with a capacity of 8,000.

Glasgow Life, which was working with the WOMAD team on the project, issued a statement in which it explained that while the audience response to the programme and the vision for the event had been extremely positive, ticket sales did not reach the level required to deliver the festival sustainably in its inaugural year: “This reflects the challenge of launching a new large-scale event in a competitive and crowded market at this time.”

WOMAD, founded by solo artist and former Genesis frontman Peter Gabriel, first took place in 1982 and has since been staged at sites across the south of England including Rivermead in Reading, the Royal Park & West Showground, and Charlton Park in Wiltshire. In November, its organisers revealed the festival would be staged at Neston Park in Corsham this year, following a fallow year in 2025.

One of the UK’s few remaining large-scale independent festivals, WOMAD (cap. 25,000) will take place on 23-26 July at Neston Park with a lineup including José Gonzáles, Oumou Sangare and Greentea Peng.

In an interview with Access All Areas, WOMAD festival director Chris Smith said Gabriel had been heavily involved in the curation of this year’s English edition: “Peter is very keen for us to explore genres, including global hip hop and rap, and bring them into the programme. That’s brilliant and will potentially address the challenges we all face around audience and demographic. There are lots of good ideas coming in from lots of different directions, but it will still be WOMAD, and those famous flags will still be fluttering.”

The WOMAD festival concept has been rolled out internationally with events staged as far and wide as Japan, Chile and New Zealand, however it has never been staged in Scotland.

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