UK’s largest reggae festival returns to Sussex in 2026

Sussex is getting a rare full-scale reggae gathering back in the field, and One Love / One Sun Festival is making its 2026 return with the kind of detail UK reggae fans plan their summer around. The event will run from 21-23 August 2026 at Bentley Estate near Lewes, East Sussex, as a limited-capacity greenfield camping and woodland music festival built around roots, dub and sound system culture.

One Love began in 2008, launched by Hastings-based reggae DJ Dan Wiltshire as a tribute to the 30th anniversary of Bob Marley’s 1978 One Love Peace Concert in Jamaica. The first festival was held at Herstmonceux Castle in East Sussex, and over the years it has moved through London, Kent and Somerset before its announced hiatus in 2023 and a rebrand into One Love / One Sun. That history matters because this is not a pop-up brand trying to borrow reggae for a weekend. It is a scene event with roots in the county, and the 2026 edition is being framed as a return to that original atmosphere-led idea.

The lineup reflects that lineage. Organisers have named Luciano, Linval Thompson, The Orb, Bushman, Benjamin Zaphania, Don Letts, Horace Andy and Mikey Dread among the artists and DJs set for the weekend. The site will be split into two main areas: One Love, which will focus on reggae, dub, roots and sound system culture, and One Sun, which will lean into ambient, left-field, trip-hop, jungle and drum and bass. That spread gives the festival a broader musical reach without losing the core crowd that comes for heavyweight bass, dubplate energy and heritage selectors.

The 2026 event is also set to include food traders, craft stalls, a dedicated wellbeing space and a classic vehicle display from the African and Caribbean Classic Car Club. The official festival site says Saxon Sound System’s 50th anniversary will sit at the centre of the gathering, alongside additions including a Rasta Village, live art, healing spaces, a sauna, an Om & Bass sober and vegan wellbeing area, homemade Caribbean food and the Bentley Miniature Railway, billed as the Train to Skaville.

The timing also places One Love in a busy UK reggae calendar. Reggae Land is branding itself as the country’s largest reggae and Caribbean culture festival, with 100,000 fans expected over 1-2 August 2026 at Milton Keynes National Bowl and more than 120 artists across seven stages. Against that backdrop, One Love’s Sussex return stands out as a more intimate but deeply scene-rooted answer, one built for people who want the culture close up, in the woods, with the system and the history right there in the same field.