Join us for a splashing good time on and around the water!

Leeds Waterfront Festival brings the City’s waterways alive each year by hosting a fantastic, eclectic mix of music, performance, arts and fun for all the family. The festival is always jam-packed with activities and creativity on the water, on boats and on dry land, stretching across five miles of Leeds waterfront.

In June, we held our ninth festival in the year which celebrated the 200th anniversary of the completion of the Leeds & Liverpool Canal, so it had to be a big one! We brought a special celebratory weekend packed with arts, entertainment, music, food & drink and family fun right across Leeds Waterfront. As well as Armley Industrial Museum, Thwaite Mills, Leeds Dock, Granary Wharf, The Calls, Brewery Wharf, Victoria Wharf and The Calls, we also welcomed a new addition, The Tetley, which brought interactive art performances, hands-on workshops and artist talks to the festival. There was a knitted barge, water sports, a gig barge, dragon boat racing, live music, splash mobs, graffiti master-classes, live street art, junk boat building, art-runs, heritage trails, guided walks and everything in between! But enough about last year…next year’s festival will take place on the last weekend of June 2017, so get it in your diaries!

Can’t wait until then? Don’t worry, we are continuing our bicentenary celebrations in October, with a series of events which will commemorate the fantastic milestone!

On the afternoon of Friday 14th October, visitors will have the chance to go back in time as boaters flock to Leeds Bridge, recreating how the water space would have looked 200 years ago when it was at the heart of the city’s industrial heritage. The next day, Saturday 15th, the celebrations continue at Granary Wharf, when work boat The Kennett sets off from Leeds on its 127 mile journey to Liverpool, recreating the journey that the first boat will have taken all those years ago.

There are also some other exciting events in the pipeline for later in the year, so make sure you keep visiting the website and our social media pages as we release the details!