IF: Milton Keynes International Festival to return for 2025 with first events confirmed

The acclaimed IF: Milton Keynes International Festival is set to return for 2025.

Taking place on Friday 18 to Sunday 27 July, the festival will bring a wide variety of large-scale outdoor events, theatrical performances and installations, circus shows, comedy, cabaret, live music and free family activities to locations across the city.

The festival takes place every two years, having been held in odd-numbered years since lockdown, and is promoted the Stables art centre from the outskirts of the city.

The return of the festival has been marked with the announcement of the first events that will be part of the 2025 events programme.

Part of the announcement saw the organisers confirm two headline events on the opening weekend, in the form of large-scale works from Catalonia’s Deabru Beltzak and Germany’s Michael Pendry.

Deabru Beltzak’s pyrotechnic and drumming promenade performance Symfeuny will makes its way through the city on 18 July 2025 where it culminates in a spectacular on-stage finale. Deabru Beltzak have previously performed in Milton Keynes, with the Catalan troupe performing as part of the Clash of Drums event that formed part of the 2015 Rugby World Cup celebrations.

Michael Pendry’s moving art-for-peace multi-media installation Les Colombes will features 3,000 white paper doves in Middleton Hall in centre:mk, the Festival’s headline sponsor. People will be invited both to make doves to contribute to the installation and to hang doves in the windows of shops, offices, community centres and homes to create a second, City-wide, installation. Les Colombes will also be shown in Rome and New York this year.

As well as these two installations, performers have been confirmed in the Spiegeltent in Campbell Park.

The schedule commences with The Demon Barbers, with the dance and folk music act performing as part of their 25th anniversary celebration tour on Saturday 19 July.

Comedian and Taskmaster series 8 champion Lou Sanders will perform on Sunday 20 July, before La Voix will host A Night with La Voix on Sunday 21 July with music and comedy.

Award winning Francophone folk band Le Vent du Nord will then perform on Tuesday 22 July, ska singer Pauline Black OBE will perform as The Selecter on Wednesday 23 July, Stornoway singers Peat and Diesel will headline the tent on Thursday 24 July and former X Factor star turned indie-pop-folk star Lucy Spraggan will play a headline show on Friday 25 July.

Two events will take place on Saturday 26 July, with the Rubbish Shakespeare Company performing Rubbish Romeo & Juliet, in a show described as “Three idiots perform Shakespeare’s famous tragedy, using only a box of tatty wigs, a worn floral dress, and a burst airbed they found by the bins.” Also performing on the same day will be rock and soul artist Roachford, who will perform a musical set in the evening.

The final day of the festival on Sunday 27 July will see the tent play host to Shlomo’s Beatbox Adventure for Kids, where Shlomo will make music with just a mouth and a mic, showing off stylings previously experienced in performances with famed stars such as Bjork, Ed Sheeran and Rudimental. The closing performers will be the Celidh Liberation Front, who will perform a mix of traditional folk and modern dance music.

Further acts, events, performances and art installations will be announced in due course. Tickets to all ticketed events are available on the Milton Keynes International Festival website.