The Festival of Chichester is one of the city’s cultural treasures. Taking place over around five weeks every summer, the festival acts as an umbrella for around 100-150 independently organised events.
If you would like one of your events to be part of the 2026 season (Saturday 13 June to Sunday 19 July 2026), it’s time to start preparing your submission(s).
Application(s) are open now and should be submitted before Saturday 28 February 2026 using our newly improved online entry system.
Start with our Take Part page. That should give you all the information you need about the application process. Note that this year you can submit more than one event during a single transaction. And before you pay the modest application fee, you will have a chance to read through and double check that all details are correct.
Shortly after you have submitted the form(s), you will receive an email to confirm that your proposed event (s) has/have been accepted into the 2026 programme. If you encounter a problem, please contact Simon via support@festivalofchichester.co.uk.
Important notes:
• Fees.
£24 per single event entry. No reductions for online or free events.
£37 for repeating events – this is defined as an event that occurs more than once in exactly the same format (i.e. the text in the brochure will be identical for all occurrences) or for an exhibition that stretches over more than one day. The fee remains £37 regardless of how many times it recurs.
You’ll need to pay the application fee after you enter the details onto our system. The payment will require a debit or credit card.
• Choosing a date. As the festival is not actively curated, it is important to keep an eye on our anti-clash (or provisional) calendar. This lists all events that have been registered so far. If you have a provisional date for your event that is not yet confirmed, we can also add this to the anti-clash calendar to help avoid last minute overlaps but please let us know if you change plans.
By anti-clash we mean, say, two classical concerts on any given lunchtime or evening. A jazz concert taking part at the same time as a classical concert would not constitute a clash as it’s in a different genre.
• Use of our logo. Please remember to use the festival logo and to credit the festival in all your publicity. It’s available from our website footer in various formats.
• Advertising. We encourage you to consider advertising in our brochure and on our website. As an event organiser, this will generate additional footfall to your event. Further information is to be found on our website.
• Ticketing. Unfortunately we cannot any longer offer a box office service due to the closure of such a facility at the Novium Museum. We encourage event organisers to make use of one of the many online ticketing services (Eventbrite, TicketSource, TicketTailor etc.). If you need to get advice on using such a service, please contact us.
Working cooperatively together is our shared aim and a win-win for all involved so we hope that participants will also share information about the wider festival with their members/contacts much as we will share information about your event(s).
Key dates
The entry window is now open. It closes at midnight on Saturday 28 February 2026. This is a month later than in previous years, thanks to streamlined processes and we hope this will make it easier for organisers to make suitable arrangements. However, we plan to be much more strict in the application of this deadline so please don’t go beyond it.
Events will be published online on Monday 6 April 2026, and the printed brochure will also be available as from that date.
The festival opens on Saturday 13 June, and closes on Sunday 19 July.
We had a fantastic festival in 2025 – let’s make it bigger and better in 2026.
By the way, in case you are looking for a new venue, or checking an existing one, we have created web pages for many of the venues available in the area.
In the event of any difficulties, please contact Support for technical issues or the Co-ordinator for issues and dates relating to your events. Our contact page also shows who is responsible for advertising and social media support.
Best wishes,
The Festival of Chichester Committee
Phil, Jen, Simon, Mark, Vicki, Edward, Earl, Anne and Simon
