Audi presents Wilderness 2026 welcomed thousands of revellers to Cornbury Park for the festival’s landmark fifteenth edition, delivering four days of music, arts, food, wellness and adventure.
There is something deliberately unruly about Wilderness. For four days, Cornbury Park becomes a place where the usual rules of the weekend seem to loosen: world-class musicians share the programme with emerging artists, Michelin-starred chefs with long-table feasts, woodland dancefloors with yoga and cold plunges, while cabaret, comedy, conversation and children’s adventures unfold alongside the headline performances.
For its fifteenth edition, Wilderness brought together critically acclaimed artists, musicians, producers, performers, thinkers, teachers, writers, chefs and creators for a weekend celebrating joyful hedonism, creativity and escapism.
The festival opened with the first of its many musical surprises, as Carl Cox took over The Atrium for a special one-off Funk & Soul set, setting the tone for a weekend in which the unexpected was almost as important as the headline acts.
As the sun went down over Cornbury Park, the Wilderness Stage became the centre of the festival’s musical programme. Eats Everything delivered an electrifying set before legendary DJ Carl Cox closed Friday night with a powerhouse performance. Saturday brought a change of pace with rising pop star Chloe Qisha, Belgian electronic pioneers Soulwax, indie-pop favourites Saint Etienne and the iconic Scissor Sisters, who lit up the main stage.
Sunday opened with American disco-funk outfit Say She She, before the Wilderness Stage became the setting for one of the festival’s most significant moments: SISTERS: Curated by Annie Lennox, which made its global festival premiere at Wilderness 2026.
The one-off collaboration between Annie Lennox and global feminist organisation The Circle, the festival’s main charity partner for 2026, brought together Lennox and a hand-picked line-up of guest performers including Jessie Ware, Benedict Wong, Becky Sikasa and Ríoghnach Connolly.
The performance moved through some of Lennox’s best-known songs, including Little Bird, There Must Be An Angel (Playing With My Heart), performed as a duet with Jessie Ware, and Here Comes The Rain Again. Then came a collective moment as all the guests, including Sunday’s headliners The Last Dinner Party, joined Lennox on stage for Sisters Are Doin’ It for Themselves.
The show culminated in Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This), bringing the festival’s enormous main stage together with a message that extended far beyond the performance itself. The special show raised funds to support The Circle’s work tackling gender-based violence and economic injustice worldwide.
For The Last Dinner Party, the evening marked another milestone. The Mercury Prize-shortlisted band closed Wilderness 2026 in spectacular style, making their first-ever headline festival performance the final major musical statement of the weekend.
The big stages, however, were only one part of the story.
The weekend was packed with exclusive and unexpected performances, including a secret set from Jake Shears at the Tia Maria bar and two high-energy intimate shows from Professor Green at the Audi Haven. Somewhere else on site, festival-goers could stumble across another surprise appearance from Carl Cox, who brought a secret set to The Riddle.
The Valley once again cemented its reputation as one of the UK’s most iconic woodland dancefloors. Beneath the trees, Groove Armada, Grammy-nominated producer Nic Fanciulli, Layo & Bushwacka!, 2manydjs, Olive F and Delilah kept festival-goers dancing deep into the night.
At The Riddle, the atmosphere was more intimate but no less energetic, with Luke Howard of Horse Meat Disco, Crazy P and Eats Everything providing a carefully curated soundtrack alongside the secret appearance from Carl Cox.
The Atrium became another of the festival’s standout hubs. Alongside its opening Funk & Soul set from Carl Cox, Rinse FM resident Ella Knight brought soulful disco, house and UK garage to the venue, while Women in Jazz presented the spectacular New Regency Orchestra.
The 18-piece Afro-Cuban jazz ensemble, inspired by 1950s New York and powered by some of London’s finest Latin and jazz musicians, provided one of the festival’s many reminders that Wilderness is as interested in musical discovery as it is in headline names.
The Wilderness Orchestra returned with its much-loved God’s Jukebox, performing orchestral arrangements of audience-requested classics, while multi-award-winning comedy troupe POLICE COPS returned with a reloaded and supercharged version of its critically acclaimed blockbuster.
On Sunday, the Atrium also hosted a special live edition of The Guilty Feminist, with host Deborah Frances-White joined by The Circle CEO Raakhi Shah and Sikh Women’s Aid Chair Sukhvinder Kaur for a powerful conversation around global feminism, allyship and turning ideals into action as part of SISTERS: Curated by Annie Lennox.
For emerging musicians, The Dive provided a dedicated home throughout the weekend, showcasing some of the UK’s most exciting rising talent, including Bleech 9:3, Tooth, Little Grandad, The North, Slag, Cruush, Basht. and Canned Pineapple.
And then there was The House of Sublime, which returned with a flamboyant, inclusive and celebratory programme spanning award-winning cabaret and contemporary drag. This year’s edition put queer nightlife at full volume, with boundary-pushing shows from Fancy Shews Presents, The Cocoa Butter Club and Southbank Centre’s Kunsty Takeover.
But Wilderness has never been simply a music festival with some food and entertainment around the edges. Over the past fifteen years, it has built an identity around the idea that all of these things can exist together.
Food, in particular, has become one of the festival’s defining experiences, bringing together Michelin-starred heavyweights, internationally acclaimed chefs and some of the brightest new names in the culinary world.
The Wilderness 2026 Long Table Banquet opened with festival favourite broadcaster Andi Oliver, in partnership with The Circle. Hosted by Oliver alongside The Circle CEO Raakhi Shah and The Circle Ambassador Lucy Siegle, festival-goers enjoyed a vibrant Caribbean-inspired menu, with £5 from every seat donated directly to support grassroots women-led organisations worldwide.
Across the weekend, headline chefs included Atul Kochhar, Margot Henderson OBE and Mike Davies, while Audi ambassador Theo Randall led an exclusive dining experience at the Audi Haven.
The Chef’s Table brought together leading culinary innovators including Ash Valenzuela-Heeger, Sam Carter, Douglas McMaster and John Chantarasak, celebrating bold flavours, seasonal British produce and pioneering sustainable dining.
For those wanting to step away from the noise, Wilderness offered an equally extensive programme of ways to slow down.
The Lakeside Spa and Wandering Wild Sauna provided places to recharge, alongside Peloton workouts, sound healing, Wim Hof Method workshops, Reiki and Women’s Circle in the Wild. New to Wilderness this year were dedicated sauna and cold-plunge experiences, offering another way to reset between late nights and long days exploring the site.
Younger festival-goers had their own world to discover. The Family Field offered theatre, workshops, games, circus skills and interactive entertainment, while Tinkertown invited children to rediscover the art of den building using reclaimed timber.
And everywhere, the festival’s 2026 theme could be seen.
Bureau of Lost Things invited festival-goers to draw inspiration from lost objects, imaginary friends and forgotten childhood dreams, and the response was suitably imaginative. Across Cornbury Park, the festival site became a parade of striking costumes and playful interpretations of things lost, forgotten or perhaps never quite real.
It was a fitting theme for a festival whose greatest trick may be its ability to make people forget where they are.
For four days, Cornbury Park became a place of extraordinary contrasts: Carl Cox in the woods; Annie Lennox on the main stage; Caribbean food served around a long table; orchestral interpretations of audience requests; drag and cabaret; jazz, house and disco; cold plunges and late-night dancing; family dens and secret DJ sets.
As Wilderness bids farewell to its wild ones who danced, roamed, explored and sparkled across its fifteenth edition, the festival leaves behind the particular kind of weekend that is difficult to summarise in a single headline.
Perhaps that is the point.
Wilderness is less about one defining moment than the accumulation of them – the performance you came to see, the artist you discovered, the meal that lasted longer than expected, the dancefloor found by accident, the stranger at the table, the costume that made you stop and look, and the secret set you almost missed.
After fifteen editions, the formula remains remarkably simple: arrive at Cornbury Park, lose yourself for four days, and see what you find.
Wilderness will return to Cornbury Park from Thursday 05 to Sunday 08 August 2027.
Gallery
Photography: JBPHOTO, Carolina Faruolo, Gobinder J Hitta, Matt Higgs and Sarah Louise Bennett.
