The award-winning Bradfield Festival of Music is an annual celebration of classical music performed in the Parish Church of St Nicholas’, a historic, grade 1 listed 12th century church set in the beautiful landscape of High Bradfield, Sheffield within the Peak District National Park.
The Festival in 2026 will run from Saturday 20th June to Saturday 27th June with great artists and fantastic programmes, which can be found here.
Revived to its present format in 1998, evidence from the Bradfield Parish archives shows that a music festival was also held in the Parish Church on Whit Monday in 1813, 1825 and 1835. Little did those festival organisers of 200 years ago know that an annual, week-long festival would be happening in the same church today.
During the first two years of the revived Festival the programme was largely comprised of performances by locally based musicians and singers. New ground was broken in 2000 when, for the first time, the Lindsay String Quartet was engaged as the “Headline act”. Following that experience the Festival invited more well known artists and in 2004 Julian Lloyd Webber, now the Festival’s President, performed for the first time at Bradfield. We maintain the list of previous concert programmes if you want to explore our history.
The Festival attracts the finest artists from all over the world who collectively perform a wide range of music genres broadly within the classical tradition. There is a strong connection between the Festival and young musicians and annual awards are presented to the two most promising young musicians based at the Sheffield Music Hub. As well as prize money, the Award Winners are given the opportunity to perform at one of the concerts.
The Bradfield Festival of Music Association, a registered charity, does not receive any national funding, but does receive limited financial assistance from generous local businesses and charities, from Bradfield Parish Council, and from individual supporters via sponsorship and donation. The Committee of Trustees organises the Festival, and planning for each starts at least 2 years ahead of the performances. The Trustees are all volunteers. The Festival Trustees are grateful to St Nicholas’ church, to The Old Horns Inn for refreshments in each concert interval and other facilities, and to Music in the Round who graciously allow us to display our festival programmes at their concerts.
Bradfield Festival of Music 2026 promises to be another very special concert series with an array of outstanding international musicians and vocalists. As ever, this year’s artists have appeared at one or more of the world’s most prestigious venues and we are privileged that they have chosen to support this Festival. We are also looking forward to a very special concert with a quartet of artists who are postgraduate students from the Royal Academy of Music. What to expect? Read this editorial originally published in the Sheffield Sixer magazine in 2023.
Bradfield is a picturesque village 8 miles north-west of Sheffield city centre, and is within the boundary of the Peak District National Park. The Parish Church of St. Nicholas, where the concerts take place, is a spectacular medieval, Grade 1 Listed Building blessed with excellent acoustics. To see where the church is located, select the visiting option from the top menu.