Smugglers Festival’s journey to become a magical and mysterious summer highlight

Smugglers Festival has been a hidden gem in Kent’s live music scene for almost fifteen years. 

Nestled right at the end of festival season, as August rolls into September, the 2000 capacity event takes place at a secret location near Deal. Split across five stages, much of what’s on offer is hidden in woodland, which only adds to the magical feel of it. 

Launched in 2011 by Will Greenham of the band Cocos Lovers and a few friends from the local music scene, the first event was pulled together in a matter of weeks and played host to about 500 people. 

“At the beginning it was a totally mad, very, very buzzy energy, but quite anarchic,” says Stewart Hughes, who now programmes the festival. “By some magic it just worked and people came.”

Originally focussed on acts from around East Kent, the festival expanded its outlook to the wider world music scene in its early years, and now books a diverse selection of artists across a vast array of genres. 

“Back at the beginning, it was a real testament to the strength of the local scene that it was any good at all,” says Stewart. “And now it's a real testament to the underground grassroots.”

This year’s headliners are This Is The Kit, Zawose Queens, Vieux Farka Toure and Heliocentrics. Elsewhere, you’ll find artists including Pictish Trail, Samba Toure, Honeyglaze, Colossal Squid, Blind Yeo, Ziah Ziah, Shelf Lives, and Mara Simpson. 

These may be names that fill your playlists or a baffling collection of seemingly random words.  Either way, a lot of effort goes into curating a programme Stewart and the rest of the Smugglers team are confident you’ll love. But as well as that, a great deal of effort goes into making the festival an experience in itself.

“The way we’ve laid it out means there's lots of different areas you can go into, lots of different vibes that you can curate and you can create a sense of multiple spaces,” says Stewart.

While the main stage is out in the open, the festival’s four other stages are hidden in the woods, each offering something different once you’ve sought them out. 

There’s second stage The End Stage, nestled - as the name suggests - right at the far end of the site; Gilly’s Wood, a tiny amphitheatre; Nomad’s Land, built for more interactive performances; and late night area Chai Angles. As well as music, you can watch theatre, take part in craft workshops and more.

Much of what you’ll find across the site now has developed over multiple festivals, and new tweaks continue to be made each year. 

“We used to have a secret bar called The Absinthe Bar, which was a really fertile place for lots of different ideas,” explains Stewart. “In there was a cupboard that you could go through and then you were in a gambling hall. And then, if you’d got a ticket from the bar at the beginning, you could go through that into some sort of immersive theatre performance.”

While that labyrinthine venue no longer exists, ”it’s dissolved into a few different constituent parts.”

Ensuring that each festival is a memorable experience for its audience is key to what makes it such a special event. But the team behind it are also focussed on making sure that the musicians who play come away feeling good about the event too.

“Completely invariably, they have an amazing time because the crowd is really nice. It just is a lovely crowd. And that's partially because it's small. It's got a bit more of a sense of identity.”

Not only that, he adds, the attention to detail behind the scenes is as important as what is seen out front. In particular, that means making sure the sound on stage is as good as it possibly can be, which “really informs the performance”. 

“A lot of festivals do get it a bit wrong,” he says. “The sound on stage will be a complete afterthought - it'll sound good out front, but the performance won't be as good. There's lots of festivals that do it really well, but I think we punch quite above our weight in terms of production values.”

This isn’t theoretical on Stewart’s part. Formerly the drummer in Cocos Lovers, he still plays with various acts and last year performed with Will Varley on the main stage. 

“I really noticed how everything is so clear, so you really get in the moment because you're feeling the music,” he recalls. “It made me realise that that's what everyone's experienced, whenever they come and play. That makes such a difference.”

In recent years, many UK festivals have been cancelled or gone out of business entirely as rising costs and other financial constraints spiral. Despite those high production values and around 400 staff on site over the weekend to keep it all running smoothly, Stewart says that Smugglers has managed to avoid these commercial pressures.

That comes down to the fact that Smugglers is “more about the experience” and therefore doesn’t rely on having big household names on its posters to sell tickets. So while it does have “certain fragilities,” Stewart admits, “it's amazing and it is strong.”

While putting on any festival is “always a bit of a risky undertaking,” he goes on, “Smugglers is lucky that it's got such a nice community around who recognise its value and support it.”

The communal feel of the event is one of the festival's big positives, and unlike many events you won’t find any brands or advertisers taking up space on the site. 

“There's no risk of us taking on advertising partnerships or anything like that,” Stewart insists. “I don't think that will ever happen. It's a really unusual, important thing to be able to run a festival anywhere without huge financial backing and it takes a whole village of people to make that happen.”

While it does face “new pressures” as it develops, Stewart says that he feels they are “ultimately positive things”. Putting on the event has become “a bigger responsibility to hold” over time, he says, “because there's more people involved now and because it is an important thing.” 

The biggest concern about the future of the festival is its location, which remains a secret partly to maintain the mystery of the event and partly because “it's someone's garden. It just happens to be a very big garden.”

“We might not be able to stay on that plot of land forever,” he says. “It’s owned by a couple called Paul and Linda. And they're amazing. They are incredible. They really get it and they understand it's an important thing and they want to support it. So it wouldn't work without them. If they ever move, then we don't know if we'll be able to continue there.”

While that’s “not going to happen any time soon”, he says it’s important right now to “make the festival strong” and “more well known”. Doing so will “give us more of a chance to retain what Smugglers is somewhere else in Kent, if we ever did have to move.”

Having now worked on the festival for over a decade, Stewart is heavily invested in its past and future development. But it goes far beyond being a job, he says. 

“Obviously I'm biased, but I do think it's amazing. I'm inspired by it. Pulling it together is a heck of a lot of work. But each year is so inspiring, it's so magical being there. How much spiritual and intellectual energy you get from it is amazing. It really tides you out throughout the year and it keeps it moving forward and growing. It’s a funny kind of positive feedback loop.”

Smugglers Festival 2025 takes place on August 28-31. Day and weekend tickets are available now. Find out more and book.