Reading & Leeds 2021
Reading & Leeds 2021
The Reading Festival was originally known as the National Jazz Festival, which was conceived by Harold Pendleton (founder of the Marquee Club in London in 1958) and first held at Richmond Athletic Ground in 1961.
Throughout the 1960s the festival moved between several London and Home Counties sites, being held at Windsor Racecourse, Kempton Park, Sunbury and Plumpton, before reaching its permanent home at Reading in 1971. Since 1964, when the festival added a Friday evening session to the original Saturday and Sunday format, it has been staged over three days, with the sole exception of 1970 when a fourth day was added, running from Thursday 6 to Sunday 9 August.
About the Reading & Leeds
The Reading and Leeds Festivals are a pair of annual music festivals that take place in Reading and Leeds in England. The events take place simultaneously on the Friday, Saturday and Sunday of the August bank holiday weekend, sharing the same bill. The Reading Festival is held at Little John's Farm on Richfield Avenue in central Reading, near the Caversham Bridge. The Leeds event is held in Bramham Park, near Wetherby, the grounds of a historic house. Campsites are available at both sites and weekend tickets include camping. Day tickets are also sold.
The Reading Festival, the older of the two festivals, is the world's oldest popular music festival still in existence. Many of the biggest bands in the UK and internationally have played at the festival over five decades. The festival has had various musical phases over the years, but since the current two-site format was adopted in 1999, rock, alternative, indie, punk and metal have been the main genres featured in the line-up. More recently hip hop has comprised an increasing proportion of the lineup, including headline sets by artists such as Kendrick Lamar and Post Malone.
The festivals are run by Festival Republic, which was divested from Mean Fiddler Music Group. From 1998–2007 the festivals were known as the Carling Weekend: Reading and the Carling Weekend: Leeds for promotional purposes. In November 2007 the sponsored title was abolished after nine years and the Reading Festival reclaimed its original name. In 2011, the capacity of the Reading site was 87,000, and the Leeds site was 75,000, an increase of several thousand on previous years.