Glorious Day Festival Just Made June Very Complicated

Right. So. Glorious Day Festival sold out its entire debut year in 2025. Thousands of people standing on Hove Lawns with the sea behind them while house music did things to their nervous systems that are probably not fully understood by science yet. It was a first year. A debut. A test run. And it sold out. Instead of coasting into year two on the goodwill and slapping a couple of decent names on a poster, the team came back with a lineup that genuinely should not be possible for a one-day boutique festival on a Saturday afternoon in June. Whoever made these calls is either extremely well connected or absolutely refuses to settle and honestly both of those things are fine.

Groove Armada on the seafront at sunset

Tom Findlay and Andy Cato have been constructing sets that make people quietly reassess their entire relationship with dance music since the 90s. Their records are the ones that ended up on every house compilation that actually mattered, the ones that got passed around on burned CDs before anyone had a music streaming account. A DJ set from them at golden hour with the Channel sitting behind the stage is not a normal Saturday afternoon activity. That is a spiritual experience with a bar tab and a sea breeze.

Jocelyn Brown with her full live band

House music owes a serious, largely unpaid debt to Jocelyn Brown. Her voice has been on more records that actually move people than most DJs have ever played out in their entire careers. She is not doing a brief cameo appearance and heading off. She is bringing her full live band to Hove Lawns and performing properly, which is the kind of booking that tells you the people putting this festival together are not thinking about optics. They are thinking about the music. There is a difference and you can feel it in a lineup.

Then there is Todd Terry sitting right there on the bill. Todd Terry, one of the people who helped wire New York house into the shape it took through the late 80s and 90s. His records have that specific texture where your body processes them slightly before your brain does. Hearing him play outdoors on a Brighton afternoon in front of people who genuinely understand what they are watching feels almost too good to be a real and confirmed event.

The rest of the bill is not here to fill space

Norman Jay MBE has been at the centre of UK outdoor dance culture since before most of the people attending this festival were born and he still plays like he has something to prove to everyone in the room. DJ Paulette spent years helping shape Manchester's club scene into something that actually meant something and has never once delivered a forgettable set.

Fat Tony's parties have a reputation for converting regular people into house music people at an alarming rate. Jon Pleased Wimmin has been part of this scene for decades and brings an energy to a stage that is genuinely difficult to describe without just pointing at it. Smudged Soul rounding out the local side of a lineup that is not exactly crying out for more names.

Venue and Food and Tickets

The whole thing takes place on Hove Lawns, which is one of those venues that does a lot of the atmosphere work for you.

You are outside. You can see the sea. The June light goes that specific golden horizontal that makes everything look like a memory you have not made yet.

There are food vendors, cocktails, glitter stalls for the people who commit fully, and a VIP option that gets you fast track entry, a private bar and golden circle access right at the front of the stage.

General tickets from £39.50. The 2025 debut sold out well before the day arrived and this bill is considerably larger, so the logic of waiting does not hold up particularly well.