Burnley Canal Festival

​Burnley Canal Festival takes a 2026 break before a bumper event for 2027 Year of Culture.

Organisers of Burnley Canal Festival announce that the very popular, award-winning event will take a break in 2026, with the festival not taking place this August Bank Holiday weekend. Instead, the Festival partners are focussing all their efforts on ambitious plans for an expanded event for Burnley 2027 Year of Culture.

Burnley Canal Festival has grown year on year, attracting an estimated 5,000 annual visitors, and has won multiple local and national awards. Burnley 2027 Year of Culture will be a huge, twelve month celebration of art, heritage and culture in all its forms. The much-loved Canal Festival will be a key event in the Year of Culture calendar, and so organisers are planning to extend its footprint to multiple sites along the canal. 

Co-producers Mid Pennine Arts and Super Slow Way have ambitious plans to grow the festival for 2027 and beyond with future editions of the festival extending to additional canal side heritage sites, working with an expanded group of Festival partners, stakeholders and event sponsors to support the event. BCF 2027 will return on its regular date at August Bank Holiday, but bursting out of its familiar footprint!

Meanwhile at the current Festival base at Finsley Gate Wharf there will be activities through summer 2026 organised by Super Slow Way and Culture Burnley with hosts Finsley Gate Wharf Ltd. Look out for details of those on the BCF and Super Slow Way social media.

Nick Hunt, Creative Director of Mid Pennine Arts, said: ‘We want to thank all the thousands of 
people who have been such loyal BCF supporters over the last few years. We don’t like asking you to wait, but we think it will be worth it! Year of Culture will be a vital development for all of us in Burnley, and so we want to make sure we put on the best possible BCF for 2027. We’ll also be growing the Festival partnership, to make sure the event we all love has a firm base for a long-term future.’