De Beauvoir Jazz Festival 2026: A Local’s Guide to London’s Best Small Jazz Weekend
Three days, six rooms, one extraordinary corner of Hackney. Here is everything you need to know, and why I would not miss it.
I have walked these streets for years, and I have learned to pay attention when something rare lands on my doorstep. The De Beauvoir Jazz Festival is exactly that. For one long weekend in July, a quiet grid of Victorian streets two miles north of the City turns itself over to live music of every shade. There is no corporate main stage here. There are no wristband pens or sponsor tents. There is a church, a couple of pubs, a much loved members’ club and a closed off residential block, all handed to the musicians for a weekend.
If you have never been, let me paint it for you. A pedestrianised street where kids chalk the pavement while a tuba rattles the front windows. A candlelit church where a folk singer from Vermont holds three hundred people in total silence. A members’ club with a proper sprung floor and a cheap bar, where complete strangers are swing dancing by ten o’clock. This is not a festival you watch from a hundred metres back. It happens around you, in rooms small enough to see a trumpeter catch their breath.
The festival launched in 2025 and sold out its best stages almost immediately. For 2026 the team has done something telling: rather than chase a bigger field and a bigger crowd, they have added a third day purely so they could bring over Tuba Skinny, one of the finest street jazz bands working out of New Orleans. That instinct, depth over scale, is the whole point of this place. It would rather be the best small festival in London than a middling large one.
People reach for comparisons, and I understand why. This is not the EFG London Jazz Festival, with its Barbican headliners and city wide sprawl. It is not Love Supreme out in the Sussex fields either. What it offers instead is intimacy and a sense of place that the big events simply cannot buy. You are not a ticket number. You are a guest in someone’s neighbourhood, and the neighbourhood is one of the loveliest in inner London.
It also matters that the festival is run as a not for profit Community Interest Company, by residents, for the area and anyone willing to travel for it. Money raised goes back into the music and the streets it is played on. In a city where so much culture has been priced out or paved over, a grassroots festival that pays its artists properly and keeps its footprint light is worth turning up for on principle alone. The fact that the music is genuinely brilliant is the happy bonus.
So consider this your local’s briefing. Below you will find what the festival is, when and where it runs, the full 2026 line-up worth your money, the venues, how tickets work, and where I would send you to eat and drink before and after. Read on, then book before the good nights sell out, because last year they did.
What is the De Beauvoir Jazz Festival?
The De Beauvoir Jazz Festival is an independent, community led jazz festival staged across De Beauvoir Town in Hackney. Its first edition ran in July 2025, and the 2026 festival is its second outing. It was founded by people who actually live here, which you can feel in every decision, from the choice of venues to the way the streets themselves are used as stages.
At its heart sits a simple belief: jazz is not a museum piece or an exclusive club, but a unifying, joyful thing that belongs to everyone. The founders take their cue from New Orleans, where jazz has always lived out of doors, in second lines and on street corners, as much as in concert halls. The ambition is to bring a little of that spirit to a London neighbourhood, year after year, and on the evidence of the first edition it is working.
The festival is set up as a Community Interest Company. In plain terms, that means it is a not for profit run for community benefit rather than private gain, with its purpose locked in by its legal structure. The team is led by founder Payal Wadhwa, a designer and urbanist based in De Beauvoir, with the award winning jazz trumpeter and vocalist Pete Horsfall as artistic director. Around them is a group of local champions handling everything from funding to volunteers, all working to keep the festival accessible.
That accessibility is not a slogan. The programme is built so cultural activity feeds back into the area: supporting independent businesses, drawing people onto the pedestrianised streets, and putting money in the pockets of working musicians. Fair treatment of artists is part of the founding logic rather than an afterthought, which is sadly more unusual than it should be on the festival circuit.
There is an environmental thread running through it too. The organisers are explicit about keeping the festival’s footprint low and its impact gentle, leaning on the fact that De Beauvoir has been a low traffic neighbourhood for half a century. Most of the audience arrives on foot or by bike, the venues are a short stroll apart, and nothing about the weekend requires a car or a coach. For a festival, that is a quietly radical thing.
Since launching, the festival has grown its reputation faster than its size, which is precisely the right order. The 2025 Block Party sold out. Word travelled. For 2026 the team has held its nerve on scale and instead deepened the programme, which tells you everything about what they are trying to build. This is a festival with a long game.
https://www.debeauvoirjazzfestival.co.uk/2026
When and where is De Beauvoir Jazz Festival 2026?
The 2026 festival runs from Friday 10 to Sunday 12July.Friday and Saturday form the main body of the weekend, with the all access Patron Pass covering both. Sunday is a bonus day, added so the festival could host Tuba Skinny, and it closes with an afternoon set and an evening party. If you only have one day, Saturday is the densest, but the Friday opener and the Sunday send off are both worth building a long weekend around.
Everything happens in and around De Beauvoir Town, a small neighbourhood in the London Borough of Hackney that sits roughly two miles north of the City. It is one of those pockets of London that rewards anyone who slows down. The streets are quiet by design, many of them pedestrianised, lined with Jacobethan houses and centred on the leafy calm of De Beauvoir Square. You will see more people on bikes than in cars, and you will hear the music before you see the venue.
How it connects to the rest of North and East London
Part of the appeal is where De Beauvoir sits. It is wrapped on all sides by neighbourhoods you probably already know. Dalston is on its eastern edge, with Dalston Junction and Dalston Kingsland stations a short walk from most of the festival venues, plus all the late night energy of Kingsland Road. Hoxton lies to the south, which is where you will find Hoxton Hall, one of this year’s stages. Haggerston, with its Overground station and the Regent’s Canal towpath, is the quickest hop in from the south east.
To the west, De Beauvoir slips into Islington and Canonbury, with Essex Road and its restaurants forming the festival’s natural dining strip, and Canonbury’s handsome squares a few minutes further on. This is the through line that makes the festival so easy to fold into a wider day out: you can arrive via Dalston or Canonbury, eat on Essex Road, catch a set in a De Beauvoir church, and end the night dancing near Mildmay Park, all without ever needing transport.
The location is not just convenient, it is the festival. Those quiet streets become natural stages. The architecture gives every set a backdrop that a marquee never could. The independent cafes, delis and pubs become the festival’s bars and green rooms. Few London events are this rooted in a single, walkable square mile, and that rootedness is exactly why the weekend feels like a neighbourhood throwing open its doors rather than a production company rolling into town.
The 2026 line-up, act by act
This is a small festival with a serious line-up. Mercury Prize nominees, a Jazz FM Award winner, a genuine New Orleans powerhouse and some of the best young players in London, all in rooms where you can hear every note. Here is who is playing and why each one is worth your evening.
Sam Amidon · Friday, St Peter’s Church, 7pm
The festival opens in the best possible setting with Sam Amidon, the Vermont born, London based singer and multi instrumentalist who turns old American folk songs into something haunting and new. He plays guitar, fiddle and banjo, and across eight albums he has built a reputation for taking traditional ballads, hymns and work songs and quietly reinventing them. The New York Times once described how he loads familiar songs with hidden surprises, and that is exactly the feeling: you think you know where a tune is going, then it slips somewhere else. In a candlelit church, with his gentle, evocative voice, this will be a beautiful, hushed way to begin the weekend.
Ego Ella May · Friday, Hoxton Hall, 9pm
Friday night moves to the wonderful Hoxton Hall for Ego Ella May, the British Nigerian singer and songwriter whose music slides between neo soul, R&B and contemporary jazz. She won Best Vocalist at the 2021 Jazz FM Awards, earned a five star review in the Telegraph, and has written for and with the likes of Ari Lennox and Kojey Radical. Underneath the genre blending there is a real love of jazz holding everything together. Her acclaimed FIELDNOTES series of EPs shows an artist completely in command of mood, and in a room as atmospheric as Hoxton Hall this should be one of the weekend’s standout sets.
The Block Party: Theon Cross, Lady Kamikaze and Island Girl · Saturday, De Beauvoir Block, 3pm to 8pm
This is the heart of the festival, and the ticket I would buy first. The Block Party takes over a closed off residential block for five hours of music in the open air, and it sold out in 2025. One ticket covers the whole afternoon. This year the bar has been raised with a headline set from Theon Cross alongside two superb DJs, and it is the single best way to understand what this festival is about: music in the street, neighbours and visitors side by side, the whole block alive.
Theon Cross
Theon Cross headlines the Block Party, and he is a genuine star of the London scene. An award winning tuba player and composer, he has been credited with reinventing what the instrument can do, pulling swaggering basslines and funk flecked melodies out of an instrument most people file under brass bands. His music threads jazz through dub, soca, grime and sound system culture, and often explores Black British identity and his Caribbean heritage. He is a core member of the Mercury nominated Sons of Kemet and has worked with everyone from Jon Batiste to Makaya McCraven. Hearing him outdoors, on a London street, is about as good as it gets.
Lady Kamikaze
Spinning at the Block Party is Lady Kamikaze, a DJ and promoter with an encyclopaedic love of vintage sound. Her sets pull from the 1930s through the 1970s, moving across jazz, R&B, soul, funk, gospel and Afro Latin and Caribbean rhythms. She has been a vintage music obsessive since her teens and came up alongside the late, legendary DJ El Nino, whose spirit she carries onto the decks. She knows how to read a crowd and pull a dance floor together, which is exactly what an afternoon street party needs.
Island Girl
Also on the Block Party bill is Island Girl, the artist name of Bianca Wilson, a DJ, banjoist and vocalist whose work digs into her cultural heritage and diasporic experience. She blends traditional jazz and folk with the sounds of her urban upbringing to make something that is entirely her own. It is a thoughtful, rootsy counterpoint to the louder moments of the afternoon, and a reminder of how wide the word jazz can stretch.
Clarinet Summit: Adrian Cox and Giacomo Smith · Saturday, St Peter’s Church, 6.45pm
If you love the older, hotter end of jazz, this is your set. The Clarinet Summit pairs two of the finest clarinettists around for an evening of New Orleans flavoured fireworks in St Peter’s Church.
Adrian Cox
Adrian Cox is a leading voice on the New Orleans clarinet, with a feel for the early jazz tradition that very few players can match. His knowledge of the music and the musicians who made it runs deep, and it shows in every phrase. In 2018 he was chosen, alongside Giacomo Smith, to play with Wynton Marsalis and the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra for the Benny Goodman celebrations in both London and New York. He has a famously devoted following and a long list of sold out shows across Europe.
Giacomo Smith
Giacomo Smith co leads the Clarinet Summit, and he is a wonderful musician in his own right: a clarinettist, saxophonist and composer who moves easily between traditional and contemporary jazz. Born in Italy and raised in the United States, he is best known here for the Kansas Smitty’s House Band, a collective that has done as much as anyone to make classic jazz feel current. He has shared stages with Soweto Kinch, Guy Barker and many others, and has produced records for the likes of Jamie Cullum and Zara McFarlane. Together with Cox, expect a set that is virtuosic, warm and a lot of fun.
A Night at the Vortex: Lucy-Anne Daniels and Liselotte Ostblom · Saturday, Vortex Jazz Club, 7.45pm
For one night the festival decamps to the Vortex, London’s most beloved jazz room, for a double bill of two singers at the top of their game. This is the connoisseur’s pick of the weekend.
Lucy-Anne Daniels
Lucy-Anne Daniels is a vivid storyteller and a playful improviser, grounded in gospel and jazz. She builds her sound from a rich voice, pedal effects and live looping, drawing on influences from Lisa Fischer to Bjork. With a background in theatre and spoken word, her performances carry real emotion and a sense of shared experience. In a room as storied as the Vortex, that intimacy will land hard.
Liselotte Ostblom
Sharing the bill is Liselotte Ostblom, a Swedish born, London based vocalist, composer and bandleader who works across jazz, gospel and improvised music. She grew up in a musical family in Stockholm, performing as a child chorister at the Royal Opera before stepping away from the commercial industry to build her own voice rooted in improvisation and storytelling. Her career has spanned concert halls, churches and studios across Europe, and her artistry has the depth that only that kind of journey can give it.
Nine Lives Jazz Club: Swing Dance Social · Saturday, Mildmay Club, 8pm
This might be my favourite thing on the whole programme. Nine Lives Jazz Club brings a swing dance social to the Mildmay Club, with live music from the North London Jazz Collective and friends. It does not matter whether you can dance: complete beginners and old hands end up on the floor together, and by the end of the night nobody cares how they look. If you have never been inside the Mildmay Club, this is your excuse. It has a gorgeous floor, a famously cheap bar and an atmosphere money cannot manufacture. Serious joy, as the organisers promise.
Joe Webb’s 7-A-Side · Saturday, St Peter’s Church, 9pm
Saturday closes in the church with Joe Webb’s 7-A-Side, and what a way to end the night. Webb is a 2025 Mercury Prize nominee and a force at the keyboard, an extraordinary pianist and improviser who folds the flavour of 1990s Brit pop and his Welsh roots into a sound that feels both classic and brand new. He has worked with Kansas Smitty’s and even with the Wynton Marsalis Quartet, and he is in constant demand as a recording artist on both piano and Hammond organ. Catching him leading his own seven piece, in a church, to close the main day is the kind of moment this festival exists to create.
Tuba Skinny · Sunday, 2.30pm
Here is the band that earned the extra day. Tuba Skinny are one of the great contemporary street jazz outfits out of New Orleans, world class interpreters of early jazz and blues who have built a devoted global following from the pavements of the French Quarter. The festival added a whole extra day to its 2026 edition just to fit them in, which should tell you how special this booking is. One important note: tickets to Tuba Skinny must be bought separately, even if you hold a Patron Pass. Do not assume your weekend pass covers it, because it does not.
Closing Party: Jack Jules, Giulia Marro, Tom Ward and Friends · Sunday, The Scolt Head, 6pm
The festival signs off in the loveliest possible way, with a closing party at The Scolt Head, the much loved pub at the centre of the neighbourhood. The bill gathers some of the freshest young players on the London jazz scene for a relaxed, celebratory send off. After three days, this is where the festival exhales: a great local pub, a great terrace and a room full of people who have just shared a brilliant weekend.
The events I would book first
With this much packed into one weekend, here is how I would prioritise, depending on what you are after.
The one unmissable ticket: The Block Party (Saturday). It sold out last year, it is the soul of the festival, and one ticket buys you five hours with Theon Cross and two superb DJs in the open air. Book this before anything else.
For a hushed, special evening: Sam Amidon (Friday). A folk singer reworking old American songs in a candlelit church is exactly the kind of moment you will still be talking about months later.
For the jazz heads: A Night at the Vortex (Saturday). Two extraordinary singers in London’s most cherished jazz room. The Vortex holds a small crowd, so this is the one most likely to disappear early.
For families and the open air: The Block Party again (Saturday afternoon). An afternoon street party on a closed off block is the most relaxed, child friendly part of the weekend, with room to roam and music you can wander in and out of.
For dancers: the Nine Lives swing social (Saturday). Live music, a sprung floor and a cheap bar at the Mildmay Club. No experience required, just turn up ready to move.
For a grand finale: Tuba Skinny plus the Closing Party (Sunday). A world class New Orleans band in the afternoon, then a loose, joyful wrap up at The Scolt Head. Remember the Tuba Skinny ticket is separate from the Patron Pass.
For the night owls: Joe Webb’s 7-A-Side and Ego Ella May. Two Mercury and award level headliners closing out Friday and Saturday nights respectively. Either one is a proper main event.
The festival venues
Half the magic here is the rooms. Every venue is a short walk from the next, and each one shapes the music played inside it. Here is where the festival happens.
St Peter’s Church
The spiritual home of the festival, and its main stage in all but name. St Peter’s hosts three of the weekend’s biggest sets: Sam Amidon on Friday, the Clarinet Summit on Saturday evening, and Joe Webb closing Saturday night. A church is a near perfect jazz venue, with natural acoustics, a sense of occasion and just enough hush to make a quiet passage land. Expect to sit close, listen hard and leave a little moved.
The De Beauvoir Block
This is the Block Party stage, a residential block closed to traffic and given over to music for an afternoon. It is the most distinctive venue of the weekend and the truest expression of the festival’s idea: the street itself as a stage, neighbours leaning out of windows, an open air dance floor where there is usually parked cars. It sold out in 2025 for good reason.
Vortex Jazz Club
A short walk away in Dalston, the Vortex is one of the most important jazz venues in the country, a tiny upstairs room that has hosted giants and nurtured the entire current generation of London players. It runs as a not for profit, which makes it a natural fit for this festival. Seeing the Lucy-Anne Daniels and Liselotte Ostblom double bill here, in a room this intimate, is a treat in its own right.
Mildmay Club
A historic working members’ club on the Islington and Hackney border, the Mildmay is a glorious survivor: high ceilings, a proper dance floor, a bar that has not caught up with London prices, and absolutely no pretension. It hosts the Nine Lives swing dance social, and it is the kind of room that turns a gig into a party. If you have never been through the doors, this weekend is your way in.
Hoxton Hall
Just to the south, Hoxton Hall is a rare and beautiful Victorian music hall, one of very few of its kind left standing in the country. Its tiered balconies and intimate scale make it a stunning place to hear a voice like Ego Ella May’s on Friday night. The building itself is part of the experience.
The Scolt Head
The neighbourhood’s favourite pub, sitting right in the middle of the action, with great music, great food and the best terrace in De Beauvoir. It hosts the Sunday Closing Party, which is exactly as it should be: the festival ending where the locals actually drink. Expect a warm, full room and a fitting send off.
Taken together, the venues tell the story. A church, a music hall, a legendary jazz club, a members’ club, a pub and a street. No two rooms alike, all within a short walk, every one of them with character a tent could never fake.
How to get tickets
The festival sells tickets two ways, and the smart move is to decide early whether you want a pass or individual nights.
The Patron Pass. This is the all access option, covering everything across Friday 10 and Saturday 11 July. If you want to do the festival properly, this is the best value and the least stressful way to do it, letting you drift between the church, the Block Party and the late sets without juggling separate bookings.
Individual event tickets. Every event can also be booked on its own, so if you only want the Block Party, or a single church set, you can. Just remember the popular nights, the Block Party and the Vortex especially, are the ones that sold out fastest last year.
One thing to watch: Tuba Skinny is separate. The Sunday Tuba Skinny show must be booked separately, even if you hold a Patron Pass. It is the one ticket your pass does not include, so add it to your basket deliberately.
Prices had not been published on the festival website at the time of writing, so book directly through the official source for the current options and rates: debeauvoirjazzfestival.co.uk/2026. The Vortex night is ticketed via the Vortex Jazz Club, and Tuba Skinny via its own Eventbrite page.
My advice, plainly: book now. This festival trades on small, special rooms, and small rooms sell out. Last year’s Block Party went, and the demand has only grown. If a particular night matters to you, do not wait for a reminder, because there may not be tickets left when it arrives.
Where to eat and drink before or after
One of the quiet joys of this festival is that you never have to leave the neighbourhood to eat well. De Beauvoir and its fringes, running west into Islington along Essex Road and east into Dalston, are packed with independent places worth your time. Here is where I would actually send you.
In the thick of it: De Beauvoir
The Scolt Head is the obvious anchor, a genuinely lovely pub with great food, great music and the best terrace in the area, and it hosts the closing party anyway. Sweet Thursday does pizza the way it should be done, with plenty else besides, and is a reliable pre gig dinner. The Baring sets the bar high for a family friendly gastropub. For something more low key, Albers serves thoughtful, delightful plates (their ragu on toast has a following), and the De Beauvoir Arms is the proper neighbourhood local, right in the middle of everything.
For wine and a slower evening
Hectors is the name locals drop when they are serious about wine. Dan’s takes the agony out of choosing and just pours you something good. Goodbye Horses is a clever hybrid of wine bar, restaurant, pour over coffee spot and ice cream shop, all in one. Any of the three makes a fine bookend to a church set.
Coffee, brunch and daytime
Batch Baby is the spot if you take your coffee seriously. Trade on Essex Road is the shining light for brunch on the western fringe. HELMA Cafe and Wine does seasonal, locally sourced vegetarian and vegan food worth a detour, and De Beauvoir Wholefoods is the one stop local shop with good coffee, sandwiches and fresh flowers if you are grazing between sets.
Towards Islington and Essex Road
Godet is the newest arrival, doing smash burgers, good wine and plenty of music. Gwada serves generous, home cooked Ethiopian food run by genuinely lovely people. The Talbot is a much loved gastropub with serious cocktails and a memorable terrace, and the Duke of York carries a fun footnote in beer history as the birthplace of Beavertown Brewery.
A small local note: venues do change, so check opening hours before you set out, especially on a Sunday. But this is a neighbourhood where eating and drinking well is the default, not the exception, and the festival is built to make the most of it.
Why this is one of London’s best summer festivals
It is easy to take a festival like this for granted, so let me make the case plainly. Grassroots, community led festivals are getting rarer in London. Rising costs, licensing headaches and the slow loss of small venues have made them harder to run every year. When one appears that is this thoughtful, this well programmed and this rooted in its place, it deserves more than a passing glance. It deserves your ticket.
What sets De Beauvoir apart is that the community is not a marketing angle, it is the actual structure. A not for profit run by residents, paying its artists fairly, keeping its footprint light and pouring whatever it raises back into the music and the streets. You are not propping up a promoter’s margin. You are helping keep a piece of living culture alive in a part of London that has fought hard to stay itself.
Then there is the music, which would stand up at any festival in the country. Mercury nominees, a Jazz FM Award winner, a New Orleans band flown in for a single extra day, the cream of young London jazz, all in rooms small enough to feel every note. You will not get this proximity at a field festival, and you will not get this neighbourhood at an arena. The combination is genuinely rare.
So here is my closing pitch. Block out the weekend of 10 to 12 July. Book the Block Party before it goes, then build a couple of church nights and a Sunday send off around it. Walk between the venues, eat at the places I have pointed you to, talk to the people next to you, and let a quiet corner of Hackney show you what a festival can be when it is made by the people who live there. London does not have many weekends like this left. Do not waste this one.
De Beauvoir Jazz Festival 2026: FAQ
What is the De Beauvoir Jazz Festival?
It is an independent, not for profit jazz festival held across De Beauvoir Town in Hackney, run as a Community Interest Company by local residents. It launched in 2025 and uses the neighbourhood’s churches, pubs, a members’ club, a music hall and even a closed off residential street as stages, with a New Orleans inspired focus on jazz as something joyful and open to everyone.
When is De Beauvoir Jazz Festival 2026?
It runs from Friday 10 to Sunday 12 July 2026. Friday and Saturday are the main days, covered by the all access Patron Pass, with a bonus Sunday added for Tuba Skinny and the closing party.
Where is it, and how do I get there?
It takes place in De Beauvoir Town in Hackney, about two miles north of the City. The nearest stations are Dalston Junction, Dalston Kingsland, Haggerston and Canonbury, all a short walk away, and the area is famously walkable and bike friendly, so you will not need a car.
Where can I buy tickets?
Book directly through the official festival website at https://www.debeauvoirjazzfestival.co.uk/2026
The Vortex night is ticketed via the Vortex Jazz ClubVortex Jazz Club, and the Tuba Skinny show has its own Eventbrite page.
Can I attend individual events, or do I need a pass?
Both. You can buy a Patron Pass for all access across Friday and Saturday, or book individual events on their own. Note that the Sunday Tuba Skinny show must be bought separately even if you hold a Patron Pass.
Is the festival family-friendly?
Yes, particularly the Saturday Block Party, an open air afternoon on a closed off street that is easy to bring children to. As with any event involving evening and licensed venues, check the details of specific late night sets when you book.
What are the best performances to see?
The Block Party with Theon Cross is the standout and tends to sell out first. Sam Amidon in St Peter’s Church, the Vortex double bill, Joe Webb’s 7-A-Side and Tuba Skinny on Sunday are all strong picks depending on your taste.
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