Best Festivals of 2025 The results are in

Who ran the Best Festivals in 2025? Last month East of England festival goers were invited by the East Anglian Festival Network to vote for their favourite events held across the six counties in the East of England during 2025.

The EAFN’s 2025 Festival Awards annual poll, which started out in Suffolk and Cambridgeshire as a bit of fun almost ten years ago, has grown to cover all six counties in the East of England and is recognised as a prestigious accolade by its winners who are presented with their ‘Golden Mike’ awards each year.

Taken from The EAFN’s published list of festivals in the region, over eight-hundred festivals were included in the voting process and almost six thousand votes were registered during the polling process.

The festival awards aim to recognise the work that organisers put into making their events happen. Many small events are run entirely by volunteers but even the major festivals still rely on volunteers to do everything from litter picking, car parking, selling merchandise, and customer service.

Unlike some awards where the organisers select a shortlist, The EAFN Festival Awards lists all the events from their extensive database and let the fans decide.

Best Festival in the East of England

Topping the region once again, for the third time in succession, ALB Festival in Essex is the East of England and Essex Festival of the year 2025. Billed as Colchester’s biggest family festival their 2025 line-up included Sophie Ellis-Bextor and Pixie Lott.

ALB organiser Peter Dutch said:

“All the team at ALB Festival are extremely proud to receive such an accolade for the 3rd year in a row.

As an organisation that’s gives back to the community whether at our festival or supporting people in need, it’s wonderful to know that the hard work of everybody involved is appreciated and to see how much people enjoy our family friendly festival and the hard work we put into keeping it affordable, accessible and inclusive as possible.

Thank you to everyone who took the time to vote for us.”

Bedfordshire was included in the voting for the first time in 2025 and resulted in Sandy Music Festival coming out top of the list. This community run, multi venue festival is the first Bedfordshire based festival to boast a Golden Mike Award.

Cambridgeshire’s Estafest were first time winners in 2024 and have repeated their success this year in a very tight contest that was too close to call right up until the last day of voting.

Topping the table in Hertfordshire was Folk by the Oak which takes place in one of what used to be Henry VIII’s deer parks, which just goes to show the variety of venues that make up the festival landscape in the East.

Norfolk’s winner is a festival which will celebrate its 75th birthday in 2026. King’s Lynn Festival has evolved into a world class annual celebration of music and arts.

And finally, not only did Suffolk attract the biggest number of votes but it also produced the closest result of all the counties. Lowestoft Carnival, marking its return after a thirteen-year absence, came out on top by a whisker.

Organising a festival in the current economic climate is not easy. We have lost many well-known names in recent years, so it was very encouraging to see a brand-new festival score high in the rankings. FOMO Fest in Stowmarket finished third in the Suffolk voting – well ahead of some very well-established big-name festivals in their county. Not only that, but their votes placed them seventh in the East of England. In recognition of this achievement The EAFN is introducing a new annual award: The EAFN New Festival Award which will be presented to the organisers at FOMO Fest 26 which takes place in Stowmarket on 5thSeptember.

Mike Wilson Founder of the EAFN commented:

“Thank you to the thousands of festival goers that voted again this year and congratulations to everyone. The top ten for each county and the overall regional positions are available on The EAFN website. We look forward to presenting the winners with their trophies, the repurposed broken microphones which we affectionately call “The Golden Mikes”. These are made for us by the Centre in Bury St Edmunds, a community training workshop centre. The awards are our annual thank you to the people that put on all these incredible events across our region. They provide so much fun, fulfilment and funds for our communities, charities and the local economy “.

Summary