Ocean Colour Scene lock in Friday at a bigger Brit Fest

Tickets go on sale this morning for four days at Ashley Hall Showground, with Matt Goss and Marc Almond topping the other main nights and two further Friday names still to drop.

Brit Fest will stretch across four days next July after organisers confirmed a main-stage bill headed by Ocean Colour Scene, Matt Goss and Marc Almond. The festival returns to Ashley Hall Showground in Altrincham, Cheshire, from Thursday 15 to Sunday 18 July 2027, opening on Thursday for the first time in this expanded format.

The line-up was set out at a launch event on 24 September at Delta Hotels by Marriott Manchester Airport. Ocean Colour Scene will headline Friday night, joined on the bill by the Lightning Seeds, Huey Morgan of Fun Lovin’ Criminals and Laurie Wright. Two further major Friday artists are due to be revealed on 3 October. Matt Goss takes Saturday; Marc Almond closes Sunday. Symphonic Ibiza opens the weekender on Thursday with Kelly Llorenna, Livin’ Joy and Rozalla.

Birmingham on the Friday bill

Ocean Colour Scene formed in Birmingham in 1989 and became one of the leading British rock names of the mid-1990s. They have placed five albums in the top 10, including a number one in 1997, and have taken seventeen singles into the top 40, six of them top 10. The self-titled debut arrived in 1992; the leap came with Moseley Shoals in 1996, the record that fixed the band’s sound and reach. Marchin’ Already followed in 1997 and went to number one, with One from the Modern arriving in 1999 and We Are The News in 2000. Later releases have kept the band's live reputation in view, among them Live at the Bridgewater Hall with Q Strings in 2015 and Moseley Shoals: Live From the Hydro in 2017. A Friday headline in Altrincham puts that run of records back on a big outdoor stage for an audience that already knows the songs cold.

Beside them on the Friday bill are the Lightning Seeds, the Liverpool band formed in 1989 by Ian Broudie after earlier spells in Big in Japan, Care and Original Mirrors. What began as a studio project for Broudie widened into a touring group after Jollification in 1994. Commercial success through the 1990s left one song in particular lodged in the national memory: “Three Lions”, the collaboration with David Baddiel and Frank Skinner, which reached number one in the UK in 1996 and again in 2018, with a re-worked version also topping the chart in 1998. Recent releases include the 2023 EP Do It Like Jazz and the singles “Happiness” and “Midnight Lovers” from the same year. Sharing a Friday with Ocean Colour Scene underlines how firmly both acts still sit in the British pop and rock continuum the festival is built around.

Saturday’s Sheffield thread and the rest of the weekend

Saturday’s headliner is Matt Goss, with Haircut 100, Heaven 17, The Real Thing, Doctor & The Medics, Nathan Moore and Toyah also confirmed.

Heaven 17 formed in Sheffield in September 1980 as a trio drawn from the early Human League: Martyn Ware and Ian Craig Marsh on keyboards with vocalist Glenn Gregory. The early catalogue still defines them for most listeners — Penthouse and Pavement in 1981, The Luxury Gap in 1983, then How Men Are in 1984 — and the group have kept the live and catalogue side of that history active, with later titles including Live at Last and, more recently, the 2025 single “There’s Something About You”. Placing them on the same Saturday stage as Haircut 100 and The Real Thing keeps the night pointed at British pop craft rather than nostalgia for its own sake.

Sunday belongs to Marc Almond, with The Brand New Heavies, The Amy Winehouse Band, Baccara, The Magic Numbers, Musical Youth and Cole Page on the bill. The Amy Winehouse Band carries the catalogue of the English singer who died in 2011; it is a tribute to the work, not a return. Thursday’s Symphonic Ibiza bill — Kelly Llorenna, Livin’ Joy and Rozalla — opens the four-day run before the rock and pop names take over.

On sale now, with Friday still unfinished

General admission, VIP, camping and live-in vehicle packages go on sale at 10am today via thebritfest.co.uk and Skiddle. The two remaining major Friday acts are due on 3 October, so the full shape of that night will not be clear until later this week. For a station that already plays Ocean Colour Scene, Heaven 17 and the Lightning Seeds as core British catalogue, the Altrincham dates put three familiar names on the same Cheshire field next July, with the rest of the bill filling in the wider Brit Fest map around them.