There is a farm in the Mendip Hills, roughly ten miles south of Bristol, that for four days every August becomes something else entirely. Fernhill Farm — in any other context a perfectly ordinary working Somerset farm — transforms into what I would argue, without a shred of hesitation, is the most important gathering place in heavy and experimental music in this country. That place is ArcTanGent, and the 2026 edition, running from August 19th to 22nd, looks set to be one for the absolute ages.

INSEPERABLE SETTINGS

I want to paint you a picture before we even get to the bands. Because the setting is inseparable from the experience. You arrive at rolling green fields, open skies, the kind of natural terrain that reminds you why leaving the house is sometimes genuinely worth the effort. The stages are compact and close together — intentionally so — meaning the atmosphere is intimate, and you are never more than a few minutes’ walk from something that has the potential to change your perspective on what heavy music can actually be. It is a festival built on the understanding that its audience is curious, passionate, and absolutely not interested in a carbon copy of what every other summer event is offering.

The community that has grown around ATG over its twelve years is one of the warmest, most genuinely enthusiastic crowds you will encounter anywhere on this planet. There is no cynicism at Fernhill Farm. Just people who are here because the music matters to them deeply.

And then when the stages go quiet each night, the silent disco runs until three in the morning. Because of course it does.

Right then. Let’s talk about what is actually happening. There is an absolute plethora of soundscapes going on over the festival, and I have cherry-picked some of the must-sees.

Wednesday

The Warm-Up That Isn’t Really a Warm-Up

Wednesday at ATG has always operated as its own thing — a curated aperitif that, in recent years, has felt less like a warm-up and more like a standalone event that just happens to precede three more days of music. This year is no different.

Overhead, the Albatross — 15:25–16:10

Your first must-see of the entire festival. The Irish post-rock outfit brings a scope and emotional ambition to their music that feels perfectly calibrated for a Somerset field in August. If Wednesday is your arrival day and you’re tempted to set up camp and take it easy, I’d gently suggest you resist that instinct and make it to the stage for this one. A genuinely wonderful band.

Dimscûa — 17:45–18:20

Something that I find genuinely difficult to categorise — which is, as far as I’m concerned, always a very good sign indeed at this particular festival. Get yourself acquainted before their set, and you will not regret it.

Svalbard — 18:25–19:10

This is not just a must-see set; this is a piece of history. Svalbard are playing their final ever festival show at ArcTanGent 2026. Their blend of black metal fury and post-rock emotional intelligence has made them one of the most vital British bands of their generation, and the ATG community — who have watched them grow across multiple appearances at this festival — will send them off in the only way that feels appropriate. Be there. This one matters.

Thursday

Nordic Giants — Main Stage, 15:55–16:40

I would strongly encourage you to treat this as entirely non-negotiable. What Nordic Giants create is an audio-visual experience of genuine, undeniable magnitude — cinematic post-rock delivered beneath projected imagery, the kind of set that makes you completely lose track of where you are and frankly stops you caring. Seeing them at a festival of this scale, in this setting, surrounded by the Mendip Hills, is something that will stay with you long after the weekend is over. Do not be late.

The evening builds wonderfully from there. Alcest, Agent Fresco, Michael Cera Palin, Igorrr, Maruja — the Thursday schedule is relentless in the best possible way. But keep your eyes firmly on Bixler Stage as the night matures.

MØL — Bixler Stage, 20:50–21:40

Danish blackgaze at its most devastating and most beautiful simultaneously. If Thursday night at Fernhill Farm is where you first properly encounter MØL, then lucky you — what a place to have that experience.

Chelsea Wolfe — Main Stage, 21:45–23:00

This performance carries its own particular emotional weight. Chelsea Wolfe was originally announced as the 2020 ATG headliner before the pandemic took that away from everyone. Six years on, this is the fulfilment of something long overdue, and I fully expect it to be one of the defining moments of the entire weekend.

Friday

Friday is an almost incomprehensible day of music from start to finish, and the highlighted acts alone would justify the ticket price many times over.

Wildernesses — Bixler Stage, 11:35–12:05

Their layered, atmospheric post-rock carries real emotional intelligence and real depth, and a Friday afternoon crowd at Arctangent will take them straight to their hearts. Start your Friday here.

Conjurer — Main Stage, 14:40–15:20

British heavy music does not get much better than what Conjurer do live. Crushing, emotional, technically extraordinary — and a reminder that this festival has always been exceptional at championing homegrown talent. If you only catch one British metal act all weekend, make it this one.

MASS OF THE FERMENTING DREGS — Main Stage, 16:00–16:50

The Japanese noise-rock outfit brings an energy and intensity to their live performance that is genuinely unlike most of what you’ll encounter across the weekend — frenetic, joyful, overwhelming in equal measure. One of the more unique propositions on the entire Friday bill.

Perturbator — Main Stage, 19:40–20:30

This is, for me personally, one of the absolute priority sets of the entire festival. The industrial synthwave darkness that Perturbator creates in a live context hits completely differently in an open field under a Somerset sky than it does through headphones in a bedroom — and I mean that as the highest possible compliment to what this festival does to music you already love. Do not let anything pull you away from the Main Stage at 19:40. You will not forgive yourself.

Primus — Main Stage, 21:30–23:00

One of their first UK appearances since 2017. Legendary does not even begin to cover it.

Saturday

2 Promoters, 1 Pod — Yohkai Stage, 10:00–10:55

The festival’s beloved podcast slot — a genuinely warm, funny and community-rooted start to the final day that sets the tone perfectly. It speaks volumes about what ATG is as a place that the Saturday morning podcast session gets a green highlight. Come along, have a coffee, feel part of something.

The day builds beautifully from there. Jo Quail and the Crossbones Ensemble on the Main Stage, Oathbreaker delivering one of their UK exclusive performances, Chat Pile bringing their confrontational noise rock to bear — Saturday afternoon at Fernhill Farm is an event in itself.

Darkher — Bixler Stage, 17:10–17:55

One of the sets I am most personally anticipating across the entire weekend. Jayn Wissenberg’s project occupies its own completely singular space — doom-inflected dark folk of devastating, haunting beauty. There is a weight and an intimacy to Darkher’s music that a festival setting amplifies in extraordinary ways. The green highlight is the Clashfinder echoing exactly what I’m telling you: be at Bixler Stage at 17:10.

Pupil Slicer — PX3 Stage, 20:00–20:50

London’s visceral math-metal champions are delivering the kind of relentless, technically ferocious performance that the PX3 crowd will be absolutely primed and ready for by this point in the weekend. A band operating at a genuinely exceptional level right now.

A.A. Williams — Bixler Stage, 21:00–21:50

One of the absolute must-see sets of the entire festival. The space she inhabits between silence and enormity — that tension, that release, that emotional honesty — is something that the ArcTanGent setting amplifies in ways that will genuinely move you. One of the most quietly powerful live acts working in heavy music today. Do not be at the wrong stage at 21:00.

Cult of Luna & Julie Christmas — Main Stage, 21:55–23:00

Performing Mariner in full to mark its tenth anniversary — their only UK show of the entire year. That record is a genuine landmark, and to hear it in full at Fernhill Farm under the Somerset night sky is something I suspect nobody in that field will ever forget.

MASTER BOOT RECORD — PX3 Stage, 21:55–23:00

Closing out PX3 in a blaze of synth-driven, metal-inflected glorious strangeness simultaneously with Cult of Luna. The fact that this is happening at exactly the same time is, frankly, exactly the kind of problem you want to have at a festival. Make your choice, commit to it, and know that whichever stage you’re at, you’re exactly where you should be.

Final Thoughts

Twelve years in, ArcTanGent has absolutely nothing left to prove and yet somehow keeps raising the bar anyway. The farm, the hills, the intimacy, the community, the silent disco at midnight, the independent food traders, the local breweries, the complete and utter absence of the corporate festival cynicism that has swallowed so many of its contemporaries — it all adds up to something genuinely irreplaceable in the British music calendar.

I’ll see you in the field.

All remaining tickets for ArcTanGent 2026 are available, here.

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