Kalei­do­scope Fes­ti­val Alexan­dra Palace, now in its 6th year, has become some­thing of a local sum­mer insti­tu­tion, espe­cial­ly with fam­i­lies. Could a day fes­ti­val ever be in a bet­ter loca­tion? Well done to the Vic­to­ri­ans for build­ing the palace and cre­at­ing such a fes­ti­val-friend­ly site.

The main stage, perched upon Ally Pal­ly’s grassy slope, means you get an unin­ter­rupt­ed view of the stage with­out hav­ing to swerve the 6‑footer in the sil­ly hat in front of you. Or you can just con­tem­plate the Lon­don sky­line that frames the stage. Just how close does The Shard look? A cor­doned-off area hous­es the kids’ sec­tion; it’s almost a mini fes­ti­val in itself with a bub­ble­ol­o­gist, fun sci­ence, Punch & Judy, cir­cus skills and more. The activ­i­ties were under cov­er dur­ing what turned into anoth­er scorch­ing day.

Rather than focus­ing on a sin­gle genre, Kalei­do­scope once again embraced its “some­thing for every­one” phi­los­o­phy with a var­ied and crowd-pleas­ing main stage line­up. An huge, infec­tious­ly exu­ber­ant choir called Some Voic­es squeezed onto the stage to deliv­er rous­ing ren­di­tions of crowd favourites like Proud Mary ear­ly in the after­noon. Lat­er, Black Grape proved they have lost none of their swag­ger, with Shaun Ryder and Ker­mit in fine form as they seam­less­ly pow­ered through a set that stretched from open­er In the Name of the Father to the anthemic Kel­ly’s Heroes.

Dance music fans were par­tic­u­lar­ly well catered for this year. Garage orig­i­na­tor Wook­ie plus a ros­ter of DJs presided over the Cloud 10 dance stage – includ­ing a par­tic­u­lar­ly lush ear­ly after­noon set by Roni Size. Lat­er, Groove Arma­da, pre­vi­ous main-stage head­lin­ers, took to the decks to enter­tain the packed-out dance space. By this time crowd con­trol was in oper­a­tion. Giv­en the stage’s pop­u­lar­i­ty, expand­ing the space for next year’s fes­ti­val would be a wel­come move. Over on the Fringe stage, Bez’s Acid House Expe­ri­ence con­tin­ued with the dance theme. Bez’s nat­ur­al charm drew in a size­able crowd for a fun atmos­phere and even a sin­ga­long to Three Lions and oth­er World-Cup relat­ed anthems.

Rarely open to the pub­lic, the atmos­pher­ic Vic­to­ri­an Base­ments host­ed ghost sto­ries dur­ing the day while lat­er on the space mor­phed into the venue for a secret par­ty with soundsys­tem, strobes and more. Posters pinned up around the site list­ed a phone num­ber that revealed the secret set’s loca­tion, old-school style. Some fes­ti­val goers got the mes­sage: what looked like an entire school sixth form plus sev­er­al mums packed out the dim­ly lit cel­lars and danced with aban­don to an uplift­ing set by Utah Saints.

Rudi­men­tal closed the main stage while Ally Pal­ly’s capa­cious West Hall pre­pared for the night’s sec­ond head­lin­ers fea­tur­ing Kane, Belling­ham and the rest of the boys as the World Cup quar­ter final kicked into action.

Kalei­do­scope fes­ti­val, July 11th 2026