Now we’re well into the New Year*, I’m keen to look ahead to see what’s on offer to the discerning goth across the UK this year. Our goblets runneth over with festivals, as more and more promoters stake out multiple nights with a substantial roster of bands in cities and towns across the country.

This could be a windfall moment for the excellent array of upcoming UK goth bands looking for more recognition and appreciation – or thinner and thinner slices of the same tired 80s post-punk cake we’ve been cutting since Whitby Goth Weekend began in 1994. Let me know in the comments which you think it’ll be!

* – this was originally my January article!

Many thanks as always to Goth Calendar who tirelessly maintain a schedule across the country – based on your submissions, so please get over there and get contributing! I’ve organised the line-up flyers for an array of festivals from now until Halloween in order, so why not peruse and choose a live event you want to support? Honourable mention to grassroots org Goths On A Bus which has been ferrying UK goths to M’era Luna for a couple of decades now! But I’m focusing on UK events, as befits a UK blog.

Some readers may be new to Whitby ‘drama’, as vicious, incestuous and ultimately frustrating as Game of Thrones, so I’ll do my best to explain. The original promoters, who retain the copyright to the name ‘Whitby Goth Weekend’, organise their own events and this year have elected to run on another weekend – 1st to 3rd May, and at the Royal Hotel. They were succeeded by Tomorrow’s Ghosts Festival who operate the de facto ‘main’ event at the Pavilion – but they’ll only be holding an event at Halloween featuring The Mission. So it’ll be the Gothic Gathering presiding from the Pavilion this April.

This labyrinthine interaction of venues, promoters and dates can often leave attendees confused and aggrieved. Your best bet is to carefully research in advance, find the events and bands you want to see, and then make your logistical plans. It can be challenging with TGF who often have the biggest acts and sell out the fastest, so make sure you are clear on who you want to see and when they’re in Whitby. May the goth odds be forever in your favour!

Turning away – with relief! – from festival worries, I’ll bang the drum (machine) for one-off gigs and club nights tucked into poky venues, as quite simply the easiest and most sustainable place for anyone to get into, enjoy and help carry on goth in a country where live venues are suffering, and at a time when we’re expected to believe online connectivity can sustain any culture.

Criticizing the ‘net would be a hugely hypocritical act on my part, and for those truly remote it can be a lifeline into a subculture they may have no means of accessing. But I truly worry about an over-reliance on technology that robs us of dancing together in dark and smoky rooms and discovering brand new artists, music and people. This is before I get into my real concerns about Generative Artificial Intelligence and the comparative values of music made by people with machines, and made for people by machines. Another article for another day.

Instead, here’s an array of live nights I know, love, attend or have just heard of generally! Maybe there’s one local to you? If not, why not start one? Find a pub or club with a slot, teach yourself some basic music queueing and build it so they can goth! For legal reasons I must caution you becoming a goth promoter can have undesirable side effects including anxiety, nausea, poverty, irritability, insomnia, gother-than-thou syndrome and death. Of your social life. You have been warned!

Finally, there’s a raft of one-off gigs to look forward to such as Nitzer Ebb in Manchester in March, an Ist Ist tour in April, The Damned popping up in Spring and Summer, legendary Joy Division tribute Shadowplay on my doorstep in August, and Canadian post-punk legends Actors playing a few dates in September. My good friend Joel of revolutionary-romati-gothic vanguard Byronic Sex and Exile is frankly never home and you can catch his brilliant show hither, and quite literally thither about the country – and I’ll be taking my band The Scarlet Hour to both York and Whitby later this year. I’ll be making time to catch the lovely folks of OG goths the March Violets when they hit a few spots, including of course Leeds in July. And so many, many more…

This is by no means whatsoever an exhaustive list. There’s always more that I can cover in just one article, so I point you again to the helpful resource Goth Calendar that keeps tabs across the UK – but depends on you the punter flagging the events that are going ahead. Feel free to shout out in the comments as well about where you’ll be going and what you’ll be doing. Have an action-packed 2026, all!

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