As a port town, Portsmouth knows a thing or two about culture. Pompey is a place full of people from all backgrounds and all walks of life, and we have an arts and culture events calendar to match.
From kites on the beach to street art and everybody’s favourite, Ports Fest (formerly Portsmouth Festivities), our proud town has loads of brilliant events that locals and tourists can enjoy throughout the year.
We might not be Brighton, Bristol, or Edinburgh, we might not be famous for our arts scene or our cultural significance, but arts and culture are alive and kicking in Portsmouth on a local level. These sorts of festivals are on the increase too, with the Portsmouth Fringe Festival a welcome recent addition.
We will take you through the festivals you need to know about below.
Ports Fest
Ports Fest is the cultural festival in the area. It’s an ambitious multi-arts programme that has been running since 1999, and it improves year on year. The organisers and participants do a great job of reflecting Portsmouth’s identity as a sea city with a rich cultural history, as well as being a commuter belt city.
The events that make up Ports Fest are different each year, but the Mardi Gras has been a favourite, and there is usually some theatre, some dancing, lots of music, talks with interesting people, art studios open their doors and invite the public in, etc. In its first year, there were 10 events over 10 days, 20 years later in 2019, there were 122 events.
It’s not always as big as that, things do change from one year to the next and the festival has gone through a period of change in recent times, but it’s always one of the most anticipated events in the area. The festival is also rooted in creative education, offering lots of learning engagement opportunities, usually based around the theme for the festival that year. Previous themes have included Electric, Freedom, Ship Building, and loads more.
Look Up Street Art Festival
As much a community project as an art project, Look Up Portsmouth is an annual street art festival that brings international, national, and local artists together to create permanent works across the city of Portsmouth. It only started on 2023, launched by a well known street artist and Portsmouth native, My Dog Sighs.
Each year, the festival aims to include female artists and those from under-represented backgrounds, and invests in developing local talent so the pool of available artists becomes bigger as the festival grows. There are opportunities for anyone and everyone to engage with the artists and attend workshops, but anyone wanting to take part as an artist needs to be of a certain standard before they are let loose on a wall. Most are invite only, but there is an Open Call for anyone unknown to the organisers too.
It’s the sort of festival you notice popping up around you rather than having specific event times and locations (apart from the workshops), and since the art work is permanent, the results of the festival can be enjoyed for years to come.
Portsmouth Book Fest
Ever since 2010, Portsmouth Book Fest has been holding workshops, book readings, and performances in celebration of all things literature. There truly is something for everyone during the festival, which usually takes place over three weeks around February and March, helping to fill that notorious dead spot in the year.
The Book Fest is a collaboration between the Portsmouth City Council Library and Archive Service and the independent bookseller Hayling Island Bookshop. Between them, they have created something really quite special for Portsmouth. Some very famous authors have attened in the past, such as Michael Morpurgo, Dame Jaqueline Wilson, and Lemn Sissay to name a few. There are always a few very exciting ‘headliners’ each year.
It goes beyond the realms of books too, often running events that are associated with literature but offering something special on top. For example, one year they ran a CSI Portsmouth event for fans of crime novels, where crime fiction authors and real life CSI type people gave talks and ran workshops. There are usually theatrical performances of famous children’s books, and poetry readings are common, too. It’s different each year, but always fantastic.
Portsmouth International Kite Festival
The Portsmouth International Kite Festival is a unique event that puts Pompey on the map for kite enthusiasts. It’s one of the biggest kite festivals on the planet. Sure, it’s a niche community, but people literally come from all over the world to take part, and it creates a real buzz in the town. The impact of local tourism is great for Portsmouth, and residents get a free spectacle the whole family can enjoy.
The festival usually takes place in July, with Southsea Common being the location. It’s totally free to attend, anyone can simply show up and watch all of the displays, marvel at the incredibly well engineered kites on display, and even have a go at making their own at one of the kite making workshops that take place. You can also buy a kite of your own, enjoy theme park type rides, craft stalls, grab something to eat or drink from a range of vendors, and enjoy the sunshine.
The festival usually has a theme, so people design new kites to fit that theme, then fly them to display them, or even have them ‘perform’ in a choregraphed dance to music, or have them ‘fight’, and even have competitions. The Kite Society of Great Britain arrange the festival in association with Portsmouth City Council, and they always do a brilliant job.
Portsmouth Fringe Festival
New to the scene for 2025, the Portsmouth Fringe Festival aims to be a huge collaborative celebration of the arts across the island, with every type of art you can think of included. That means theatre, dance, comedy, food, poetry, painting and drawing, photography, and loads more. The Portsmouth Fringe is still in its infancy, but made a big splash in its first year.
All of the individual events are ticketed, even the ones that are free, because there is limited capacity at each venue. However, with so much going on there are plenty of opportunities to get involved even if you can’t get tickets to everything you were interested in. The events will take place at venues across the whole city, North and South, and it’s important for the organisers that everyone can get involved.
This is why they are running some events as pay what you can, some completely free, and some paid. What’s more, they include a couple of Family Fringe days, which are completely free for the whole day and have much bigger capacities as they are held in open spaces. You can find events as diverse as making your own art, traditional theatre, stand up, sets by local musicians and singers, interactive games, group acting classes, roast battles, improvisation, and all sorts more.