Camper Calling

At Camper Calling, the vehicle parked beside a tent can feel almost as much a part of the story as the artist onstage. Campervans, motorhomes and traditional tents occupy the fields of Ragley Hall over the late-August Bank Holiday, but the event has long since moved beyond being a gathering defined only by camper culture. Children disappear into workshops and lakeside activities, several generations share the same music stages, and a British band with decades of catalogue can be followed by a DJ, an emerging act or family entertainment. That mixture has given Camper Calling a distinctive place in the UK calendar: part camping holiday, part outdoor music festival and part annual reunion for people who prefer spending the final long weekend of summer living on site.

The festival began in 2016 through Jazz Events, a company that already understood the camper community through its long-running Camper Jam. The important decision was not to reproduce that Volkswagen-focused event under another name. Ragley Hall offered enough space, woodland, gardens and lake frontage to build something much broader. The Magic Numbers, ABC, Dodgy, The Hoosiers and Toploader gave the inaugural music programme an immediately accessible British pop-rock character, while smaller acts filled out the stages. Around them were circus activities, storytelling, workshops, lake entertainment and opportunities to explore the Ragley estate itself. From the beginning, live music mattered, but the day was intentionally designed so that a family did not have to stand in front of a stage from breakfast until bedtime.

Ragley Hall soon became one of Camper Calling’s strongest assets. Many independent festivals spend years moving between fields, but this one has never needed to abandon its original home. The estate lies near Alcester in Warwickshire, close enough to Birmingham to remain practical while still feeling rural. The lake provides a natural activity hub, woodland areas break up the site and broad camping fields allow different kinds of visitors to build temporary homes. Arriving in a campervan creates one rhythm; pitching a tent produces another. Either way, staying overnight changes the event from three separate concert days into a continuous weekend in which breakfast, children’s activities, music, late-night entertainment and campsite conversation all belong to the same experience.

Musically, Camper Calling discovered that its audience did not require a tightly policed genre. It works best with recognisable songs, British bands with strong live catalogues and enough pop, indie, dance and nostalgia to give different generations their own entry points. In 2019, Skunk Anansie, The Fratellis, Ash, Sleeper, Tony Christie, Lucy Spraggan and Artful Dodger could all belong to the same weekend. In 2022, Basement Jaxx appeared alongside James, Shed Seven, Starsailor, The Pigeon Detectives, The Selecter and Heather Small. This is not programming built to prove allegiance to one scene. It is designed around shared moments: choruses people know, artists who can hold mixed-age crowds and enough changes in pace to stop the weekend becoming musically predictable.

The family side is equally integrated. Craft workshops, lake activities, circus, games, wellbeing spaces, silent discos and children’s entertainment are not hidden in a distant corner while the “real” festival happens elsewhere. They occupy the same daily geography. Younger visitors can spend hours doing things unrelated to the main stages, while adults are equally free to stop treating the running order as an obligation. That flexibility is central to the relaxed identity Camper Calling promotes. A family can spend a slow morning at camp, head towards the lake after lunch and only arrive at the Lakeside Stage when an act everyone wants to see is preparing to play. The festival rewards staying rather than rushing.

The pandemic interrupted the sequence after 2019. There was no 2020 edition, and the 2021 return was strong enough to be promoted as sold out. From there the festival entered its most ambitious period. Faithless in DJ format, McFly and Ocean Colour Scene topped different days in 2023; Travis, Groove Armada and Jessie J led 2024. Greater production and bigger names did not cause Camper Calling to abandon its original camping structure. Instead, the event found a way to increase the scale of what happened onstage while keeping the surrounding estate visible and useful. Ragley did not become merely the empty ground between performance areas; its lake, woods and camping fields continued to define the pace of the weekend.

The ninth completed edition in August 2025 again moved easily between generations. Example closed Friday, Clean Bandit led Saturday and Razorlight finished Sunday, with The Charlatans, Levellers, Sleeper, The Hoosiers, Peter Hook & The Light, Pixie Lott, Kid Kapichi and The Lottery Winners spread around them. That range explains why ROCK, POP and INDIE remain the most useful broad descriptions of the festival’s musical centre. Guitars can give way to accessible electronic music, Britpop-era names can sit beside contemporary performers, and nostalgia can coexist with newer bands without forcing everyone into the same cultural lane. What many attendees share is less a genre identity than the habit of spending Bank Holiday weekend at Ragley.

The tenth Camper Calling is scheduled for August 28–30, 2026, with optional Thursday arrival and entertainment on August 27. Nile Rodgers & CHIC, Primal Scream, Five, Shed Seven, James Morrison, Maxïmo Park, Sigala, Hard-Fi, The Subways and We Are Scientists make the anniversary feel like an expanded summary of everything the festival has absorbed over a decade. No 2027 edition is officially confirmed yet, but Camper Calling reaches its tenth gathering with things that could not have been guaranteed in 2016: a permanent home, returning families and an identity larger than the campervan culture from which it emerged. The vehicles are still lined across Ragley’s fields. They are simply no longer the destination; they are the temporary homes from which the rest of the festival begins.