Leicester Riverside Festival free on 6-7 June

Leicester’s Riverside Festival returns on Saturday 6 and Sunday 7 June, bringing a free, family-friendly weekend of music, arts, craft, theatre, food and heritage access to the city centre.

The festival opens at 12pm on Saturday, with activity spread across Bede Park, the DMU Campus and Castle Gardens. Entry is free, and the programme is aimed at families as well as anyone looking for live music, creative workshops, street entertainment and a city-centre festival atmosphere without a ticket price.

For readers planning a weekend in the city, this is the practical follow-up to our earlier Leicester Riverside Festival guide, now with the full programme confirmed.

Bede Park brings the main-stage music

Bede Park will be one of the main gathering points across the weekend, with music moving through several styles rather than sticking to one festival lane.

On Saturday evening, THE OLD BOY is due to headline at Bede Park from 7pm with a DJ set covering soul, jazz, rare groove, funk, house, garage and hip hop. On Sunday, DJ Simon Philip is scheduled to round off the Bede Park programme from 6pm.

The main stage will also host a Tots’ Rave with DJ Juvie and Louisa Darling, melodic grunge from Pretty Dirty Rats, and a collaboration between Nupur Arts and KAINE choir, pairing Indian dance with African music.

That mix gives the weekend a broad family feel: early creative activity and children’s entertainment, then bigger evening sets for visitors staying later in the park.

DMU and Castle Gardens add dance, spoken word and street acts

At DMU’s campus, the Cultural eXchanges stage starts on Saturday with the Talent 25 carnival parade. Families taking part in the Talent 25 programme will lead a procession showing upcycled festival costumes.

Cultural eXchanges, DMU’s annual arts and creative writing festival, is working with Riverside this year and marking its 25th anniversary. Across the weekend, the stage will feature dance, music and spoken word from performers including DMU Dance/Moving Together, Syston Swing Band, Curve Youth Dance Group, Sam the Rapper and Mirchi Mob.

Castle Gardens and the DMU Campus will also have acoustic performers and street entertainers as part of Busk Leicester. A further Castle Gardens stage, curated by BrightSpark Arts, will feature spoken word, music, comedy and dance.

Visitors should also watch for the roaming Beatbox Jukebox, which is set to move around the festival rather than stay fixed to one stage.

Hands-on activities and heritage sites shape the weekend

The Riverside Festival programme is not only built around performances. Leicester City Council says the event will include arts, crafts and theatre activities, sports taster sessions, vintage vehicles and interactive family sessions including storytelling with Leicester Libraries, poetry, arts and crafts.

The heritage offer is also part of the draw. Riverside Festival visitors can get discounted entry to Jewry Wall over the weekend. St Mary de Castro Church, one of Leicester’s oldest buildings, will be open, with its bells due to ring at 12pm on Saturday to mark the start of the festival. A choral evensong is scheduled there at 5pm on Sunday.

Newarke Houses Museum, which is free to enter, will be open on Saturday. Heritage sites on the DMU campus, including the Great Hall at Leicester Castle, Trinity Chapel, the herb garden and the DMU Museum, will also be open over the weekend, with additional activities at the DMU Gallery.

Cllr Vi Dempster, Leicester’s assistant city mayor for culture, said the festival is expected to welcome thousands of people to the city centre and described it as “free” and “for everyone”. Dr Jacqui Norton, Associate Professor at DMU, said Cultural eXchanges would showcase the work of final-year Arts and Festivals Management students.

What visitors need to know before going

The source notice does not give a festival end time, so visitors should check the full programme before setting out, especially for Sunday plans and individual stage timings.

More information, including the full programme, accessibility details and travel information, is available from the festival listing at visitleicester.info/riverside-festival/.

Source: Leicester City Council