Record-breaking Nevill Holt Festival closes 2026 season with 16,000 tickets sold across four weeks of opera, arts, entertainment and ideas 

The Nevill Holt Festival has closed its most successful season to date, selling 16,000 tickets across four weeks of opera, music, comedy, literature, politics, food and family events – up 20% on 2025 – and drawing visitors to the Leicestershire estate of founder David Ross. The Festival was produced and programmed for a second year by UK-based live entertainment company Underbelly. 

More than 100 events took place across the Festival site, from a stellar run of Donizetti’s Don Pasquale, staged in partnership with Opera North, to internationally acclaimed music performances including the Preservation Hall All-Stars direct from New Orleans, and a crowd-pleasing Symphonic Ibiza spectacular, alongside free Community Stage performances and a programme of events for local schoolchildren and families. 25% of ticket revenue from Lord Cameron’s Health Agenda Day appearance was donated to Alzheimer’s Research UK. 

Opera North production receives national and trade acclaim 

At the heart of the season was Don Pasquale, the second production in the Festival’s five-year partnership with Opera North, directed by James Hurley and uniquely set in a 1960s Italian film studio. The production drew four stars from The Times and an exceptional five-star review in The Stage. Across the national and specialist press, soprano Harriet Eyley’s Norina and conductor Michael Papadopoulos were singled out for praise. The Stage called it “an evening that pops”, while The Arts Desk hailed a “triumph of the young”. 

World-class music 

The Festival’s music offer was expanded this year, with audiences embracing an eclectic programme spanning jazz, classical crossover and dance. Grammy-winning Buena Vista Social Club pianist Rolando Luna captivated audiences with his Havana Jazz Trio, while the legendary Preservation Hall All-Stars transformed the Font House Garden into an atmospheric open-air New Orleans jazz club in a Festival first. The season closed on a high as Symphonic Ibiza had audiences on their feet, bringing orchestral arrangements of dance classics to a packed Festival crowd and rounding off the four-week programme in celebratory style. 

An inaugural Health Agenda Day led by Lord Cameron 

The Festival’s inaugural Health Agenda Day proved one of its most talked-about moments. Former Prime Minister Lord Cameron spoke candidly about his own prostate cancer treatment, the loss of his son Ivan and his mother’s dementia, and made the case for a properly targeted national prostate-screening programme. Health Agenda Day also featured Professor Sir Jonathan Van-Tam, who reflected on the pandemic with characteristic bluntness – describing it as “once in a political lifetime… not a scientific one” – and pioneering heart surgeon Professor Stephen Westaby. 

Also speaking about their research were Professor Fiona Gilbert (Dept of Radiology, University of Cambridge), Professor Matt Brookes OBE (St Peter Mansfield Imaging Centre, University of Nottingham), Professor Nigel Mongan (Faculty of Medicine and Health, University of Nottingham) and Dr Mairi Houlgreave (Tourette Research N3 Centre, University of Nottingham). 

The strongest line-up in the Festival’s history

Dame Kristin Scott Thomas, Sir Mark Rylance and Johnny Flynn read Shakespeare’s Venus and Adonis; broadcaster Clare Balding appeared in conversation with Olympic champion Rebecca Adlington; and audiences heard from Hugh Bonneville, historian David Olusoga, Sue Perkins, Alexander Armstrong, designers Nicky Haslam and Anya Hindmarch and former Chief of MI6 Sir Richard Moore. Angela Hartnett and Jeremy King spoke about their careers in hospitality, while artist Marc Quinn and a season-long exhibition by Harland Miller anchored the visual-arts programme.

Local talent and young audiences at the centre

The Community and education side of the programme makes the Festival unique. Test Match Special’s Jonathan Agnew expertly played his euphonium with the Melton Band alongside actors Dame Imelda Staunton and Jim Carter – who even took up the conducting baton!

Pupils from the David Ross Education Trust performed Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas with Gabrieli Roar, and free community sets took place from the Melton Band and the Stamford Stompers Dixieland Jazz Band. Families also enjoyed hands-on creative workshops with bestselling children’s author and illustrator Rob Biddulph, whose hugely popular Draw With Rob session encouraged young audiences to pick up pencils and create alongside him, while BAFTA-winning, Oscar-nominated creator Mikey Please brought his wildly imaginative storytelling to life in an interactive event inspired by his award-winning children’s books. Local artist Nettie Wakefield also inspired adults to brush off their creative skills and attend a drawing workshop surrounded by iconic sculptures in the Nevill Holt gardens.

A festival at the heart of a rising cultural region

The 2026 season unfolded as the surrounding area – increasingly known as “the Notswolds” – drew national attention as a cultural and creative destination, featured this spring in the Financial Times, The Times, Tatler and House & Garden. The Festival has become a central draw in a corner of the East Midlands, now firmly on the cultural map.

The Nevill Holt Festival will return in 2027, continuing its five-year partnership with Opera North.