If you’ve typed “vanlife festival” into Google lately, you’re not being fussy. You’re trying to work out which UK weekends are actually worth filling the water tank for.
The calendar is busy. The names all sound slightly like bands that supported Shed Seven in 1998. And every event, quite fairly, will tell you it’s the friendliest field in the country.
This isn’t a brochure for the rest of the scene. It’s a straight look at the big 2027 dates, so you can plan a year without clashing with yourself. Then we’ll talk about the gathering that a lot of those other fields already look like, once you glance up at the flags.
The big weekends in 2027
Here’s the main run, in date order. We’ve stuck to the well-known names and left out anything that clashes with us.
| Dates | Event | Where |
|---|---|---|
| 2 to 4 July 2027 | Camper Jam | Weston Park, Shropshire |
| 23 to 25 July 2027 | Bug Jam | Santa Pod Raceway |
| 29 July to 1 August 2027 | Dubbed Out Festival | Royal Cheshire Showground, Knutsford |
| 27 to 29 August 2027 | Camper Calling | Ragley Hall, Warwickshire |
| 10 to 12 September 2027 | Busfest | Three Counties Showground, Malvern |
A couple of notes, because the details matter more than the adjectives.
Camper Jam (2 to 4 July 2027) is the early July VW weekend at Weston Park in Shropshire. Family-friendly, buses of every age, and usually the point in the summer when you remember you still haven’t fixed that cupboard catch.
Bug Jam (23 to 25 July 2027) marks 40 years at Santa Pod Raceway. It’s the one with the drag strip, the show and shine, and enough noise to rattle a pop-top from the next county. It wraps on the Sunday before Dubbed Out opens on the Thursday, so the dates sit close in the diary without overlapping.
Camper Calling (27 to 29 August 2027) heads back to Ragley Hall in Warwickshire for its 11th year, over the August bank holiday. It’s billed as a family music festival, and plenty of people roll up in vans.
Busfest (10 to 12 September 2027) is the late-season Transporter gathering at the Three Counties Showground in Malvern. If you’re mapping the year, that’s your September marker. It’s Busfest, one word, and it’s in Malvern, not Weston Park. Worth knowing before you blindly follow a sat nav memory from July.
If you want an earlier day out among air-cooled vans, the VolksWorld Show is at the South of England Showground in Ardingly on 21 March 2027. It’s a show more than a camping weekend, but it wakes the year up nicely.
You’ll know us even when you’re not with us
Here’s the thing about those other fields.
Go to any of the big gatherings and look up. You’ll see a sea of Dubbed Out flags snapping above the awnings, and the stickers on the backs of vans that have come from every corner of the country. Nearly 40,000 of those stickers have already gone out into the world, and the logo has a habit of turning up across the country, around Europe, and in the supermarket car park on a wet Wednesday.
That’s not us trying to take over anyone else’s event. It’s just what happens when a community actually travels. People meet in our Facebook group, they help each other with engine noises that “definitely weren’t doing that yesterday”, and then they pitch up next to each other in Shropshire, Northamptonshire or Malvern with the same flag flying.
Which is a lovely problem to have. And it’s the simplest reason Dubbed Out is the vanlife festival you shouldn’t miss.
If the flags are already everywhere else, imagine the field when it’s our name on the gate.
Why Dubbed Out is the one not to miss
Dubbed Out Festival 2027 takes place from 29 July to 1 August at the Royal Cheshire Showground in Tabley, Knutsford.
It’s a family-friendly VW and campervan festival, and you do not need a Volkswagen badge on the front to belong there. Classics, modern campers, conversions, motorhomes and the van you built yourself in a slightly chaotic order: all welcome. Friendly debates about engines are included at no extra charge.
In 2026 around 3,000 vans rolled in, and the festival sold out for the fifth year running. It’s estimated to be the UK’s third-largest VW and campervan festival, which is a polite way of saying it’s big enough to feel like a proper event and still small enough that you’ll bump into the same people at the toilets, the food stalls and, somehow, the far corner of the field.
The best bit isn’t the size. It’s the atmosphere you only get when a community that already knows each other online finally parks up in the same place. Kids, dogs on leads, music, late conversations you should have ended an hour earlier, and the sort of weekend that makes Monday feel like a personal insult.
Thursday, Friday and Saturday are for people staying on site. Sunday is the day everyone else can join in: free entry for everyone. Simply arrive and pay £5 for your parking.
If you’re new to it, we’ve already written a first-timer’s guide covering dates, tickets and what to expect.
Be first in line
Tickets for Dubbed Out 2027 go on sale on 31 January 2027. The lineup is due in December 2026, so there’s no need to guess at names yet.
The simple move is to sign up to the newsletter at dubbedoutfestival.co.uk. That’s how you’ll hear when tickets drop.
And if you want the year-round version of the same crowd, the Dubbed Out Facebook group is where the advice, the photos and the 300-comment debates already live.
Other weekends will fill your calendar. They should. Just don’t spend the summer spotting our flags in other people’s fields and then miss the one we actually throw.
See you at Knutsford.