Greenbelt is a nomadic festival which has so far been held at seven different locations in England. While the venue has changed, the core event has remained the same: a celebration of faith, justice and arts with a particular Christian perspective. The first Greenbelt Festival was held on a pig farm just outside the village of
Charsfield near
Woodbridge, Suffolk over the August 1974 bank holiday weekend, with early organisers including
Jim Palosaari, Kenneth Frampton, and James Holloway. Local fears concerning the behaviour of festival attendees in the weeks running up to the event led to the cancellation of police leave in Suffolk, and reports of some people barricading themselves into their houses. These fears proved to be unfounded, but the festival did not return to the venue. Between 1975 and 1981 the festival was held in the grounds of
Odell Castle in
Bedfordshire.
Cliff Richard was invited to play the festival multiple times, finally agreeing to do so for the first time in 1979 after organisers agreed he could play his secular songs as well as worship music. In 1981
U2 made an unannounced appearance and played a 20 minute set, to the surprise of attendees. The largest audiences for Greenbelt were during its two-year stay at
Knebworth Park in
Hertfordshire, 1982 and 1983. 1984 saw Greenbelt move to one of its longest-serving homes,
Castle Ashby,
Northamptonshire. In early 1999 plans for Freestate collapsed and its embryonic programme was hastily rolled into the Greenbelt planned for Cheltenham. The 1999 Greenbelt Festival took place at
Cheltenham but saw the lowest audiences since the 1970s. It remains the only Greenbelt to have taken place other than on an August Bank Holiday weekend. Greenbelt emerged from its financial difficulties in the early 2000s with ever-increasing audiences for festivals held at Cheltenham. In its last years at Cheltenham, although audiences were beginning to fall, they were over 20,000, comparable in numbers to those of its "glory days" in the early 1980s. The 2013 event featured multiple calls for Christian leaders to "stop being hypocritical" about homosexuality. Baptist minister
Steve Chalke described how a gay friend became "an alcoholic, drug-dependent, and suicidal" due to homophobic abuse from an Evangelical church, while speakers including
Clare Balding,
Richard Coles, and
Mark Oakley talked openly about their sexuality at the festival. In 2014 Greenbelt moved to
Boughton House, Northamptonshire, due to the planned redevelopment of
Cheltenham Racecourse, as well as part of the site being unusable after severe weather during the 2012 festival caused flash flooding across parts of the racecourse. Since the move the festival has been scaled back after a drop in numbers and possibly due to the related loss of finances. At the 2022 festival, Greenbelt announced that from 2023 they would bring the start and end dates forward to coincide with the festival's 50th anniversary. Greenbelt 2023 began with festivalgoers gathering on Thursday 24th and programming running from the morning of Friday 25th to Sunday 27th, instead of Friday evening to Monday evening. The 2024 festival will follow the same pattern of dates running from 22 to 25 August 2024. The 2025 festival ran from 21-24 August 2025, with headliners including
Nadine Shah and
Kate Rusby. Although there is constant tension between its faith-based origins and a more exploratory attitude to engaging with the world, the perspective of the festival remains one rooted in the Christian tradition, and drawing Christian music lovers. ==Organisation==