What is Everywhere At Once?

For one weekend the country's small rooms become the headline act. Fatboy Slim leads a cast of more than 2,000 artists playing over 1,000 shows in upward of 400 grassroots venues from 26 to 28 June, the project pulled together by the Music Venue Trust with The National Lottery, Save Our Scene and the Association of Independent Promoters. The names span scenes and generations: grime from D Double E and P Money, pop muscle from Becky Hill and Tinie Tempah, sound-system weight from Toddla T and JK Flesh. Tickets and the full venue map sit on the festival's own site, with individual rooms announcing their lineups in the run-up.

Why stage it on Glastonbury's weekend?

Because the gap is the point. Glastonbury is taking a fallow year in 2026, leaving the last weekend of June wide open, and the Music Venue Trust walked straight into it. The message is blunt: the festivals everyone photographs are fed by a circuit of 200-capacity rooms that operate at a loss, and that circuit is shrinking fast. More than a third of UK nightclubs have shut since 2020, grassroots venues keep closing at a venue-a-week clip, and the economics for promoters have not improved. Putting 2,000 artists into those rooms on the one weekend the national spotlight is free is a way of making an invisible problem impossible to ignore.

What does it mean for dance music?

Everything that headlines a festival main stage was once road-tested in a sweaty back room. House, techno, jungle, garage and grime all came up through venues like the ones playing host this weekend, and Fatboy Slim, who built his name in Brighton clubs long before the beach shows, knows exactly what is at stake.

"These spaces are vital for culture and for local communities, so if there's anything I can do to help shine a light on them and help keep that spirit alive, I'm more than happy to be involved."

The weekend will not fix venue economics on its own. But it reframes the conversation away from nostalgia and toward infrastructure, which is the only framing that ever gets venues funded.