The two-day music extravaganza is back for its sixth year and is now a favourite fixture on the town’s community calendar.
On Friday 10th and Saturday 11th July people will be able to enjoy over 100 live performances - all free to attend - taking place across commercial and garden venues around the town.
From rock and blues to cellos and choirs, there will be something to suit every musical taste. Audiences can wander from place to place, with some performances staged in private gardens, and others being held at town-centre venues. Popular spots for acoustic and solo sets will once again be the Bandstand, the Manor House courtyard, Alpkit, Outside the Box and the Clarke Foley Community Hub, while full-on rock and pop bands will be on offer at other venues.
The festival is sponsored through the generous donations of Ilkley’s commercial venues, including Martinez, Ilkley Tap, Flying Duck, Riverside, Ticket Office, Thomas Hardy’s Irish Bar (formerly the Yard) and newcomers to the festival this year, Bini and Friends of Ham.
The organisers are hugely grateful to these businesses for continuing to support live music, and for their generous donations which enable the festival to be such a great success year on year.
The festival’s founder, Dan Hammond, says:
"Ilkley Live is all about uniting the community through the joy of live music.
"We are continuing to promote and encourage more music in and around the town, and so at Ilkley Live Community Music Festival 2026 we will be collecting directly for Ilkley Live from the commercial venues and from the audiences.
"The performers, organisers, sound engineers and venue managers are part of the local community and are not paid - all donations help to fund the festival, including public liability insurance, Performing Rights Society fees, publicity materials etc, and will also go towards putting on and underwriting other live music events through the year, including the ever-popular Blues Nights, Busking Festival and the Community Sing.
This means that we can all get together to hear more music and share in the joy that listening to and performing live music brings."
To plan and build your own festival programme for the weekend, go to www.ilkleylive.com
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