🎶 Compass Festival 2025
📅 Friday 17 – Saturday 18 October 2025
📍 Folkestone’s Creative Quarter
🎸 Kent’s biggest alt music festival is back!
After a triumphant debut, Compass Festival returns for its second edition this October — bringing two nights and an afternoon of high-energy, genre-spanning, independent live music to Folkestone’s quirkiest grassroots venues.
🔥 What to expect:
– 35+ DIY and independent acts across 8 walkable venues (5 on Friday, 6 on Saturday)
– Genres from alt-pop and indie to folk, punk, shoegaze, disco, electronica + more
– A gender-balanced lineup with over 50% of artists from Kent and the South Coast
– Afterparty DJs until 2am each night
– Wristband system: 1 ticket = access to all shows that day (subject to venue capacity)
🏠 Our Venues:
Compass is hosted in the heart of Folkestone’s Creative Quarter. Expect everything from an underground skatepark and a prohibition-style New Orleans bar to a fairground-inspired alt space, a coworking hub, and some of the town’s most loved grassroots venues. Each one is just a few minutes’ walk from the next — so you can wander between them and discover something new around every corner.
F51
The Blind Pig
Black Market
The Clearing (upstairs at Quarterhouse)
The Workshop (Festival Hub & Wristband Exchange)
Market Square
The Old Cigar & Olive
20th Century Speedway
🎤 First wave of acts announced in July – next one announced mid-September, check our socials!
A Void (Grunge, London)
Currls (Garage Rock, Brighton)
Delicia (Indie, Ashford)
Diet Jesus (Rock n’roll, Ramsgate)
Honey Buzzard (Alt Rock, Canterbury)
IO (feminist punk rock, Ashford)
Joe Bulley (indie/electronica, Folkestone)
Moon Hooligan (indie rock, Folkestone)
NO TV (dance-punk, Margate)
Pizza Weasel (alternative, Canterbury/Margate)
Polite Bureaux (Post-punk electronic, Brighton)
Punching Swans (Math rock, Medway)
Vanity Fairy (Disco, London)
Winter Gardens (shoegaze, gothic, Brighton)
With 363 artists applying this year, the second wave should be announced mid-September!
🎟️ Tickets:
– Super Early Bird: Cheapest tickets, very limited and only available until 6 Sept midnight (or until sold out).
– Early Bird: Until 17 Sept midnight
– Regular: Final release.
– Concessions: Available for Students/U25s and people on low/no income.
– Festival Support / Pay It Forward: If you’ve got the means, help Compass stay sustainable and fund more concession tickets for others.
📍 Wristband collection at our new Festival Hub, The Workshop, on Tontine Street.
💡 How come the whole event is ticketed this year?
Last year we ran free afternoon shows with donations — but that didn’t cover costs, and we unfortunately lost money. To keep Compass alive, pay every band and crew member fairly, hire proper PAs, and keep tickets affordable, all shows are ticketed this year. Tickets average less than £1 per band!
🙏 Compass is a volunteer-led Community Interest Company (C.I.C) made of local Folkestone music lovers. Early ticket sales are vital for our survival. Buying now helps us plan, reduces financial risk, and ensures Compass can keep creating space for grassroots music to thrive.
We’re grateful for support from Creative Folkestone’s Festival Fund and Folkestone Music Town CIC’s Future Sound of Folkestone Fund, which help us keep Compass thriving as a grassroots, independent festival.
🌊 Come celebrate music and community by the sea!
