London, UK Field Day continues to be cooler than a cucumber with a hipster beard and an ironic tattoo. It’s a great place to get day-drunk on craft beer after lining your stomach with the latest vegan food in the super-chill Village Green area. But Field Day has serious muso cred too; it's carefully curated to include edgy guitar music, shoegaze, alternative R&B, smart rap, revered DJs and everything else that’s in vogue.
Somerset,UK Every summer, when it isn't having a ‘fallow year’ to give locals a break, the Big Daddy of UK festivals commandeers a chunk of Somerset for music, mischief, hippies, healing and a whole lot of cider. It’s difficult to convey quite how vast Glasto is, with whole worlds of activity taking place outside the arena as well as an awe-inspiring musical line-up ranging from pop to reggae to rock to dubstep to metal to folk to techno.
Brecon Beacons, Wales With more than 50 years of experience behind it, Green Man is as cute as a button. It’s got pretty incredible fresh food from every nook and cranny of the globe, 99 ales and ciders in its very own beer festival and eight bars selling all your fave cocktails. Music wise, it’s the wet dream of middle-aged Guardian readers (Kraftwerk, Metronomy, Kate Tempest, that sort of thing).
Oxfordshire,UK The ever-magical Oxfordshire August getaway, Wilderness’s music bills have got better and better over the years, but the festival isn't just about great sounds: from outdoor theatre to talks and debates, horse riding to yurt-building, a lakeside spa and even long-table banquets with leading chefs, this is much more than a music festival. Book now if you want in: it’s always a sell-out affair.
Suffolk, UK This Suffolk festival offers the ultimate cool-but-chill weekend away, with a line-up of adventurous pop and alt rock in an cute setting. Latitude is a very family-friendly affair and the music programming is artfully mixed up with comedy, poetry, spoken-word, dance and theatre. DJs are hidden in the woods for late night revelry, the famous colourful sheep roam the surrounding fields, and you can wash it all down with a refreshing local ale.
Winchester, UK More than a festival, Boomtown is a whole alternate reality. Each year is a different chapter in a running storyline, and the whole festival is made into a vibrant, pulsing and fucking mental city. There are secret hotels with beds and live ska bands, a job centre, hidden pathways, and a whole lot of actors doing weird things
This intimate woodland party is one of the UK's most raved-about new(ish) festivals, and it's easy to see why. Everything you hear at Houghton is relayed through the finest sound-systems, having been chosen by long-standing Fabric resident Craig Richards, who curates the event. Richards handpicks a killer cast of DJs, including some of the biggest and best names from house, techno, disco and more.
The Festival Internacional de Benicassim (FIB) or Benicàssim for short, is a perfect combo of holidaying and festival. For the former, you’ve got the actual titular town 20 minutes away, with a glistening sea to dip into and wash away the toxins of the previous night. For the latter, you’ve got some of the best guitar music line-ups year in and year out.
Budapest, Hungary A giant of the European festival circuit, Sziget regularly attracts more than 350,000+ revellers to its charming island location in the heart of Budapest. The sheer scale of the festival – 50 venues and 200 daily performances over seven days – is dizzying. Musically, there’s everything from big names to smaller acts performing metal, jazz, folk, authentic Roma… (name a genre, and someone’s bound to be playing it somewhere).
Pula, Croatia Outlook is all about soundsystem culture for people that love any type of beat going; everything and anything from two-step to four-to-the-floor to breakbeat. Mainly, it’s all about bass; there’s parties going all day and night long in every corner of the festie. Camping is great fun, too; plus you can get involved with boat and beach parties. The festival has grown into two events, one in the UK (Cholmendeley Castle) and the original one in Tisno, Croatia.