St Albans Beer & Cider Festival

The big one is back this September and tickets are on sale now! It pays to book early because for a limited time you can bag a 10% early bird discount. Just enter the code EARLY2026 at checkout (applies to non-member ticket packages only). If you're a CAMRA member it's even better - your admission to the festival is now free when booked in advance and you can reserve your spot now via our website. Search online for St Albans Beer & Cider Festival to start planning your visit!

If you loved St Albans City of Ale weekend, then don't forget to book your tickets for September's other annual extravaganza of all things things delicious to drink - the St Albans Beer & Cider Festival! The ultimate celebration of beer and cider - now in its 29th year - takes place from 23-26 September at @thealbanarena , and tickets are available online now. If you're a @campaignforrealale member, you can take advantage of a free admission package, only available by booking online. If you're not a CAMRA member, then by acting fast you can take advantage of a 10% early bird discount on your order - just enter the code EARLY2026 at checkout. Don't miss out on this epic event featuring more than 300 beers, dozens of ciders, and outstanding entertainment. Check out the @stalbansbf website for further details, and we'll see you at the bar!

Following our attendance at the fantastic @neraxcaskfestivals , our delegation has now rounded off its Stateside trip with an extremely memorable visit to Wilton, Maine, where we met Jeff Chaisson and his team at @getsomeambitionbeer . Wilton and its surroundings are a beautiful place and Jeff was an incredible host. Despite serving a population of less than 4,000, the Ambition taproom is a top class beer venue up there with the best found in big cities. As well as a wide selection of beers, including cask ale, it features a vintage bar billiards table manufactured in Hertfordshire! On the way back to the airport we had time to call into one other great brewery. In a Massachusetts town called Beverly (close to the much better-known Salem) is Pete Harkins’ @backbeatbrewing . Pete explained to us that his passion for brewing began during a holiday to the UK in the early 1990s when he tasted Marston’s Pedigree and experienced cask ale for the first time. Today, he and his team are brewing their own outstanding range, some of which are loving tributes to celebrated British ales while others are original creations. While this was a highly enjoyable trip, it was also very useful for developing and forging new connections. We are now working to get beers from Ambition and Backbeat across to the UK to serve at the 2026 St Albans Beer & Cider Festival, with other potential irons in the fire too. Both Jeff and Pete are hoping to fly over to attend our festival in September and others from the New England brewing scene are considering it as well. We look forward to offering them as warm a welcome as they gave us!

A group of volunteers from the St Albans Beer and Cider Festival team were honoured to be invited to travel from the UK to Boston, Massachusetts, to experience the United States’ foremost cask beer festival, NERAX. The New England Real Ale Exhibition @neraxcaskfestivals , which has been running since 1997, features around 100 different drinks. As well as American beers, some of which are casked exclusively for the event, this also includes a large number of British ales shipped across the Atlantic through a partnership with @campaignforrealale . Our connection was initially forged via Jeff Chaisson of @getsomeambitionbeer after he travelled to St Albans to see his beer on sale at our 2024 festival. He enjoyed his visit so much that he returned in 2025 with some friends, and it was agreed that a return visit must happen! As well as great fun, it’s been an excellent learning experience from which we can continue to develop our own annual event. Pictured here behind the NERAX bar are our local volunteers who made the trip, along with many new friends made at the festival. Our next stop before we head back home is Wilton, Maine, to visit Jeff and his team at the home of Ambition Brewing - and we can’t wait for that!

September may feel like a way off, but planning is already under way - and tickets are on sale NOW! Why get yours this early? Because a) you know you’ll want to be there anyway, and b) there’s a 10% early bird discount available on all non-member tickets! Just use the code EARLY2026

On Saturday, we ran our annual coach trip to thank our wonderful St Albans Beer & Cider Festival volunteers. We first visited Mad Squirrel Brewery, where nearly 50 of our volunteers enjoyed a tour of the site and some drinks in the taproom. Then afterwards, we headed on to nearby Berkhamsted, for a few hours exploring the pubs of the town. It was an excellent day and a great chance to reconnect with fellow volunteers as we look ahead to this year’s event. If you’d like to join the friendly and sociable crew who make one of St Albans' favourite annual events possible, then we would love to hear from you. Whatever your professional skills and experience, we can probably put them to good use! We have some key leadership roles available for those able to commit to the whole event - but even if you just want to help out for a day or evening, we would very much value your involvement. If you'd like a no-obligation chat about how you could be part of the team, drop an email to [email protected] The 2026 festival takes place from 23rd-26th September, so please reserve the dates in your diary! And look out for updates about this year's festival theme coming soon...

As if not busy enough planning for the next St Albans Beer & Cider Festival in September, our organising team have taken on a new project - co-ordinating the @stalbanscityofale weekend, coming up in April... This brand new innovation will see venues across St Albans come together to host an incredible celebration of beer, cider and pub culture. Expect festivals, tap takeovers, talks, tastings, guided trails, live music and more! Supported by @campaignforrealale and @savestalbanspubs , the weekend is aimed at bringing a large number of visitors to the city, as well as encouraging local residents to get out and about and enjoy what's on their doorstep. The period to keep free in your diary runs from 16th-20th April. To keep up to date, please follow the @stalbanscityofale page!

🍺 Ahead of Members’ Weekend, check out the St Albans: City of Ale website! 🍻 @stalbanscityofale is a St Albans-wide programme of beer, cider and pub-focused activity taking place 16–20 April 2026, to help you explore St Albans’ pubs and clubs — many of which have something special lined up just for this occasion. 💻 Check it out using the link in our bio. 👉 Read more on What’s Brewing. @stalbansbf

We're extremely sad to report that good friend of our festival, the writer Des De Moor, passed away yesterday. Anyone who attended one of the presentations or beer tastings that Des compered for us at the festival over the past few years will know what incredible personality he brought, and how enthusiastic he was when it came to talking and educating about great beer and pubs. Des will be a great loss to the beer world - we feel extremely fortunate to have had him play a part in our event, and have had the opportunity to get to know him and learn from him through working together. Our thoughts and condolences to Des's family and friends.

After a lot of hard work, the festival is now finally packed away and sent off to our warehouse for another year. @thealbanarena is back to resembling the theatre its architect intended it to be, and ready to host its next event, a comedy show by Rhod Gilbert. So all that remains from us for 2025 is to extend some very important thank yous. It turns out the list of thanks includes so many people that it's too long to post to Instagram! So please head over to our Facebook page to see the details of everyone we owe our appreciation to. But most importantly… 💖 THANKS to the more than 200 volunteers from @campaignforrealale and @st_albans_lions_club who set up the festival, took it all down again, and performed the many roles needed to keep the event running smoothly over four days. It simply would not be possible to run an event like this without those people giving up their time to make it happen. And of course 💖 THANKS to the more than 5,000 people from near and far who bought a ticket, came along, and enjoyed what we put on. More than anything, you are the festival. We saw our attendance figures rise again for the third year running, an achievement that makes all the hard work worthwhile. 📞 If you have any comments at all about the festival, or suggestions to make, we’d love you to get in touch. We have an online survey that you can fill in (link in the comments). Or you can drop us an email or a direct message. Or better still, come along to our Festival Review Meeting on Saturday 22nd November, from 2.30pm, at the Royston Club, College Road, St Albans. Everyone is invited! 🍻 If you enjoyed yourself, or if you're sad to have missed out, do make sure you get next year's dates in your diary: 23rd-26th September 2026. And as we start to plan for then, if you're interested in volunteering to be part of the friendly team that makes the magic happen, we'd LOVE to hear from you. Just drop an email to [email protected] and we can set up a chat about how you could play a role. Until next time... CHEERS! Your organising team (pictured from left): Dave, Geoff, John, Russell, Emily, Ben and Tom

We've got a fantastic gallery of 2025 festival photos now available, all taken by our photographers Will Lewis and Gerard Pegoue. You can check out more of Gerard's work and give him a follow on Instagram at @shotsbypni To look at all our photos from this year's event, see: /stalbansbf/photos_albums

As always, during the festival we brought together a panel of judges for our Hertfordshire Beer of the Festival competition. All Herts breweries were invited to put forward a beer in two different categories: cask and keg. Here are the full results. CASK 1st: @tringbrewery Side Pocket for a Toad 2nd: @twobobbrewco Porter 3rd: @newriverbrewery Blind Poet KEG 1st: @crossoverblendery Persia 2023 2nd: @baron.brewing Fuzz 3rd: @sixhillsbrewing Pining for the Fjords Congratulations to all of the above!