Review: Out There Festival 2026 ★★★★★
Out There Festival makes the Great Yarmouth a magical place to visit for 3 days in May. Unmissable circus, street theatre and surprises.
★★★★★ Out There Festival | All Over Great Yarmouth | 28-30 May 2026
Londoners! Get your adventure rucksack packed and get on the train to Great Yarmouth via Liverpool Street. In around 3 hours you’ll be at a beautiful wild beach with Blackpool kitsch seaside vibes and the most fabulous free festival, Out There Festival, which will boggle your brain in the most delightful way.
This year the festival takes over the East Coast resort’s St George’s Park and environs with whimsy, wonder and a touch of madness. The festival is produced by Out There Arts who have 2 heritage venues, The Ice House and The Drill House. They have truly made GY the permanent British home of circus with year round activity for when the hurly burly of the festival fizzles out.
The festival has dozens of impressive performances from all over the world in the park’s beautiful outdoor stages and near the Drill House as well as street food, pop ups and stalls. This open access format with no gates, tickets or required payment as well as soft touch security is nice to see in the climate of big ugly festivals in London parks for example. It feels revolutionary to take over our towns to make them more surreal and fun with this Feast of Fools. It gives us agency to take a minute away from our screens and laugh, sitting the gorgeous surroundings of nature and the wild sea.
The standouts of this year’s edition have to be Humo y Polvo‘s Morgane Maret and Martina Calvo who steal the show at the Ice House with ‘I Dreamt I had Hairy Teeth’. A beautfully bizarre and hairy acro-dance odyssey that blissfully explodes expectations and stereotypes of women. Their first duo is a triumph with incredible syncopation and hilarious personas. This energy is explored further in their other show at the festival in their collab with Las Corpa ‘Obsolete Elegance’ (pictured above), which uses dolls heads, batshit characters (that sometimes make kids cry) and bizarre skits outdoors. Their surreal and beautiful creations are a marvel and make them ones to watch.
It was joyous to see the park come to life with performances from Bowjangles who shake up classical to be almost cool, Granny Turismo rip up the pavements and bring lols on their giant sholleys (granny trolleys) but could do with a few new jokes and Kano Mami makes panto style clowning seem fresh, unexpected and funny in her trademark blue tracksuit.
Not forgetting if you leave the park and head to pitch 11 and 12 which showcased the future of circus with incredible feats of young people on diablo and a wonderful duo trapeze as well as in the same area the jaw-dropping Steal This Circus troupe on the insanely high flying trapeze.
One big highlight for foodies is the incredible Chim Chim Plant Based Thai which delivers flavour-packed meat-free Thai from their gorgeous food truck.
The headliners of the festival did fall a little flat however; FÜLÜ X GORILLA CIRCUS was an impressive set up with festival music, projections, a repurposed fire truck/crane was the star of the show but there wasn’t enough circus to keep it thrilling. Margarida Montenÿ used this crane too but the show was painfully slow at moments, eeking out a simple rope concept into a agonising 35 minute endurance feat with little crescendo.
Access is clearly important and nearly all the shows are free but the organisers could take a look at Greenwich and Docklands International Festival for a true inclusivity including access areas so everyone can enjoy the magic.
Overall Out There Festival is a triumph of free arts in a seaside town that both holds so much entertainment history but like a lot of us is in need of cheering up in dark times.
I am Joint Editor at To Do List. I like free, cheap & offbeat London, especially: cabaret, art, theatre, pop-ups, eating out, quirky films, museums, day trips, social enterprise & much more.
