How to secure a sell-out festival line-up your attendees can’t resist
Learn from the masters: in this article, we guide you through the crucial steps to securing an incredible festival line-up, with invaluable insights from festival planners who've done it time and time again.

For avid music festival goers, not much rivals the experience of getting to see incredible acts under an open sky among like-minded people. In fact, 57% of UK festival-goers would prioritise heading to a music festival over a holiday in Europe.
As a festival creator, securing a line-up that people are genuinely excited about can be one of the most thrilling but challenging aspects of planning your event.
Although it’s true that atmosphere, escapism, and feel-good vibes all play a major role in attracting people to a festival, the line-up is what creates that initial hook. It’s what tells people that this is a festival for them, for their music taste, and the scene they identify with.
In this guide, we provide some practical tips on how to secure a line-up that really sings (‘scuse the pun), with some great insights from experienced festival organisers thrown in for good measure. Let’s go 🎵.
How to lock down an amazing festival line-up your attendees can’t resist
Read on to learn about these key steps in sourcing and negotiating the perfect festival line-up:
- Start with the financials
- Give yourself plenty of time to plan
- Focus on attendee interest (but don’t forget your budget)
- Make the most of your own network
- Try an open application process
- Build a sense of community with performers
- Think carefully about variation
Start with the financials
Your line-up will be one of the most expensive items in your festival budget. So it’s crucial to set out exactly what you are able to and willing to spend here. Start by creating a line-up wishlist, and investigating how much you’d need to spend on each act. It can help to look at other similar festivals (in size and genre), to see what kind of line-up they secure.
When defining your line-up budget, don’t forget to consider travel and accommodation costs for each act – as well as their rider terms.
A rider is a document outlining an artists’ terms – or, the things they require in order to do their performance. This can include things like stage and lighting requirements, dressing room and hospitality requirements, sound requirements and technical specifications around backing instruments.
You might soon discover that some of the artists on your wishlist aren’t feasible for your budget. Ironing this out at this stage will help you focus on those performers that are attainable, rather than wasting energy on those that aren’t.
When talking about the key factors that contribute to securing an act, Jessa Nisbett, one of the organisers behind Ontario, Canada’s Northern Vibe festival, says: “I can say that monetary incentives and being willing to accommodate a rider are the main avenues of success. Northern Vibe might be a small festival, but I'm sure if we offered The Foo Fighters enough money, plus could accommodate their rider, they'd be down to play.”
She also explains that, at Northern Vibe, they believe in paying their performers fairly. “If we can't afford them we’re not going to insult them by offering them less. There's a balance here.”
Give yourself plenty of time to plan
When curating a line-up, there needs to be plenty of time to nail things down before your festival. Consider that it might take time to hear back from artists’ agents and to carry out negotiations. Or, it might simply take longer than you anticipate to find acts that you want to perform.
It’s also crucial to remember that the festival scene is a competitive space, and that the acts you want may get booked up quickly.
Even booking smaller, up-and-coming acts can have a long lead-time, as their calendars are likely to be full of tour dates and album work.
You want to give yourself plenty of leeway to explore, discover, and secure each act – the more stage spots you have to fill, the longer you’ll need. It’s not unusual for festivals to start booking performers at least a year in advance.
One unexpected hitch here might be more to do with other festivals than your own. Clashing events (dates-wise) could make it impossible to secure your dream line-up, which may lower the turnout for your festival. Clashing dates could also make suppliers more expensive.
Denise from English Wine and Food Festival says: “The jubilee weekend was two weekends prior to ours and we feel that people were a bit ‘Festivaled-out’. It was also Glastonbury weekend so we paid top price for toilets and generators from local suppliers.”
With this in mind – it’s always wise to carefully consider which events are going on around the time you want to host yours. Shifting it from one weekend to the next might make a huge difference.
Focus on attendee interest (but don’t forget your budget)
Jessa explains that, when it comes to deciding who to have play at your festival, “Two of the biggest factors to consider are attendee interest, and cost. It’s important not to bring in someone that no one cares about seeing – we don't have a lot of acoustic acts, for example, because it's not our demographic.”
As a festival creator, you’ll already have a vision for your festival and the performers you want to play. But it’s still really important to spend some time gauging attendee interest for specific acts. You can do this through reaching out to them on social media, for example. Utilising polls, quizzes and ‘ask-me-anything’ content across your channels can be a good way to interact with potential attendees, and to give them a voice.
If you’ve already run one or more festivals, it can also be helpful to try to understand what worked well and what didn’t in terms of your line-up. “We have a Facebook community where people give feedback on what they like and dislike,” Jessa says. It’s a simple tactic but it could glean you valuable insights about the performers people would return to your festival to see again.
Finally, it can be a good idea to focus on which relevant acts are generally getting a lot of buzz. Who are people talking about a lot on social media? (Try a social media listening tool like Sprout Social to gauge this.) Who’s suddenly getting a lot of plays on music streaming services? Who’s selling out gig after gig? Following the hype can be a great way to secure a performer that people will definitely pay to see in a festival setting.
Of course, you’ll need to balance your attendees’ dream line-up with your budget. As Jessa highlights, cost is always going to be a major factor when it comes to who you can and can’t book.
Make the most of your own network
If you’re planning a music festival, the chances are that you or members of your team already have contacts in the industry.
“One of our River Stage organisers is from our area but lives in Toronto, so he’s able to book people he knows are great performers for that specific stage,” Jessa says.
Ultimately, networking with people you already know in your local music scene can be a really lucrative way to grow your line-up with amazing, passionate performers.
Alex Hobbis, co-founder of Stroud, UK’s Hidden Notes festival, says:
“We keep in regular contact with a bunch of record labels and booking agents which we started working closely with back in 2019, and new ones along the way. It goes without saying we listen to A LOT of new music to make new discoveries.”
Try an open application process
Jessa highlights that Northern Vibe also has an open application process, where artists can approach them to play a slot at their festival.
This can be a great way to discover new artists who are already keen to perform at your event. All you need to do is advertise that applications are open for your festival line-up – and provide a way for artists (or their agents) to get in touch with you. You get to decide how detailed you want their applications to be – you might simply ask them to send samples of their work, for example. Or, you might ask them to fill out more comprehensive applications with questions about their performing history, social media following, listening figures and more.
Build a sense of community with your performers
Curating an amazing festival line-up doesn’t have to be a one-off thing. Ideally, you’ll have performers wanting to come back to your event again and again. That way, you know you’ve got at least some incredible acts lined up for your next festival.
“People who play at Northern Vibe always want to keep coming back,” Jessa explains. “It’s important to build that sense of community to make sure everyone feels they should be there. This goes for attendees, volunteers, and performers. They end up reaching out to us because they want to come back.”
It’s such an important point – treating your performers well, and ensuring they feel a part of your wider ‘festival family’ can go a long way in helping you establish a longer term relationship with them. And fans who love certain acts are bound to want to see them time and time again, so it really is a win-win.
Think carefully about variation
Alex explains that it’s really important to them, at Hidden Notes, to ensure their line-up is eclectic and interesting – as opposed to being too ‘samey’:
“Although most of the artists appearing at the festival may find themselves filed together under ‘modern classical/post classical/contemporary classical/avant garde soundtrack’ in a record shop, they are hugely varied from one another in terms of their style, instrumentation, inspiration and backgrounds.
We ensure that we don’t have too many performers on the same instrument back to back – the variation in instrumentation is quite a big one for us! This year we have everything from a seven-piece electric drone choir and ondes Martenot to Scottish smallpipes and a brand new piano invention!”
- Read our full interview with Jessa from Northern Vibe >
- Read our full interview with Alex from Hidden Notes >
- Read our full interview with Denise from English Wine and Food Festival >
Ready to curate your best festival line-up yet?
Curating an incredible festival line-up is about much more than just securing popular acts. It’s about really listening to the desires of your attendees, and building long-lasting relationships with performers. In practical terms, it’s important to stick to your budget – but that doesn’t have to mean settling for a below par line-up. As the 10-year strong Northern Vibe festival proves, events that focus on local, up-and-coming talent can be incredibly popular and successful.
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👀 Keep reading:
- See how a pick-your-own strawberry event with 12 attendees turned into a thriving music festival that draws 1000 attendees a week >
- Learn how to organise and sell out a small music festival – in 9 steps
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