Ecstatic Dance Festival 2026 – Movement, Music,Nature, Community &Wellness

ECSTATIC DANCE FESTIVAL

Find your path. Unlock your potential. Learn. Explore. Create.

5 DAY TICKETS: Wed 22 July – Sun 26 July 2026
WEEKEND ONLY TICKETS: Fri 24 July – Sun 26 July 2026
-Arrival from 4pm on the first day, departure after 4pm on the last day

~ WHERE? Gillingham, North Dorset (2h direct train from London) The Leela Centre, Thorngrove House, Common Mead Ln, Gillingham SP8 4RE

Welcome to Ecstatic Dance Festival UK – a conscious dance & community gathering! Join us for 5 magical days or come along just for the weekend, step over the threshold into a unique conscious festival experience designed for both deep connection & pure fun!  ecstaticdancefestival.co.uk

ABOUT ECSTATIC DANCE FESTIVAL

This is your call to move freely, live consciously, and celebrate togetherness.
Dance with the land. Breathe with the trees. Listen to your body.
Your mind, body, and soul will thank you.

• An all-inclusive experience! Meals, teas, and key communal elements included, so you can fully arrive and immerse yourself. We’ve designed the festival around shared community meals, and we see this as a core part of the festival rooted in connection, belonging, and community.
• This is not just a festival but an experiential playground for co-creating transformational experiences. Join us for our 6th year of creating these life-affirming gatherings beyond the old drug and alcohol paradigm.
• We are a small, grassroots, intimate festival… warm, personal, human, and real. It’s led by people who love dance and music, not a big corporation!
• No marketplace culture: no constant selling or upsells, our festival is a conscious choice to value people over products! You’re not a consumer, you’re a co-creator!
• Experience the community, where strangers become friends and the community grows through shared experience, free your body through transformational workshops, open your minds & hearts! So much love, creativity & deep healing emerge from this festival!
• Ecstatic Dance Festival is a powerful sober, natural-high environment… no alcohol, no drugs, just music, movement, breath, connection, and real aliveness.

WHAT TO EXPECT

• Ecstatic Dances & Dance Parties including an exciting lineup of DJs
• Live Music with URUBU’s Afro-Brazilian Master Percussionists creating a wild, tribal, high-energy dancefloor unlike any other Ecstatic Dance you’ve been to!
• Outdoor Dances with Epic Custom Build Sound System by one of our resident DJ’s James Buchanan!
• Electronic Dance Music Fuelled Late Night Dance Parties!
• Variety of Workshops (movement, yoga, voice activations, conscious connections, breathwork, bioenergetics, trance dance, and more…)
• Sound Healing Journeys, Gong Baths & Live Music Concerts & Chill out spaces
• Cacao Ceremonies & Ritual Singing
• Campfires, Nature and Beautiful Surroundings
• Wholesome vegetarian meals & unlimited  teas   (we all eat together at set meal times)
• Sauna, Whisking Sessions, Cold Plunge and Restorative Spaces
• Facilities with hot water/ bathrooms
• Shared Accommodation Upgrade options
• Alcohol and drug-free environment
• Plenty of space to rest, integrate, and simply be!
  ..and much much more!

♥ EXAMPLE DAILY *SCHEDULE

6:50 AM – 8:00 AM Morning Active Meditation
7:20 AM – 8:30 AM Yoga or Other Morning Practice
8:00 AM – 9:30 AM Yummy Breakfast
9:30 AM – 1:00 PM Morning Gathering, Ecstatic Dance, Workshops
1:00 PM – 1:30 PM Magnificent Lunch
1:30 PM – 2:30 PM **Dishes Help
2:30 PM – 6:30 PM Sauna/ Massages/ Afternoon Workshops
6:30 PM – 7:00 PM Delicious Dinner
7:00 PM – 8:00 PM **Dishes Help
8:00 PM – 10:00 PM Evening Ecstatic Dance
10:00 PM – 00:00 PM Campfire/ Sauna/ Dance Parties / Sound Journeys or Live Music

**Dishes Help: As part of our shared community experience, we ask each participant to take one turn helping with washing up after a meal either at lunch or dinner, there will be assigned schedule for this. A small act of care that keeps our space nourishing for everyone.

PLEASE NOTE: this is just an example schedule, all workshops and timings might change slightly as we want to offer some flexibility with the schedule.

  ✨  WHAT YOUR FESTIVAL TICKET INCLUDES 

• All Workshops & Cacao Ceremonies
• Camping spot, bring your own camping gear
• Car parking space
• All meals (3 meals per day, total 12 meals OR for weekend ticket holders 6 meals). During the festival, we all eat together (breakfast/ lunch/ dinner). Venue runs a vegetarian/vegan kitchen and does its best to meet the most common food requirements for guests such as gluten free/ lactose free/ vegan and all dishes will be clearly labelled. Venue might not be able to cater for other special diets.
• All saunas (7x sessions), small sauna towels will be provided.
• Unlimited teas/coffees, accessible anytime in the main house.

✨ WHO IS THIS FESTIVAL FOR?

• Open to all adults (18+)
• No prior experience required. We welcome beginners and more experienced explorers.
• Ideal for lovers of ecstatic dance, wellness festivals, embodiment, yoga, music, and nature
• This year’s festival is not suitable for under-18s
• No dogs or other pets permitted on site (except for guide dogs)

PHOTOGRAPHY/ VIDEO NOTICE

We live in the age of social media and so to capture our alcohol and drug free festival, we want to share to the world that we can have a great time without intoxicants. We will be photographing and videoing some parts this festival. We thank you in advance for accepting this fact. Our media team, will of course be sensitive, and will only use the best shots of you.

CANCELLATION POLICY

We offer this festival in order to support the growth of physical and mental wellness of attendees and it requires many hours of organisation and planning. We ensure we have sufficient funds to do this with the following policy:

– Participants join the retreat at their own risk. Ecstatic Dance Festival accepts no responsibility for spontaneous joy, open-heartedness or sore cheeks from too much smiling.

CANCELLATION BY ATTENDEES:

-All festival tickets are non-refundable. If you cannot attend the festival due to any reason or personal matter including covid, we will not be able to issue a retreat ticket refund, sorry.

-You are welcome to pass on your festival ticket to a friend, colleague or family member, resell your ticket or consider gifting your place to someone, there are many people in our network who do not have the funds to attend such a festival. Please let us know name and email address of the person attending in your place by sending us an email with replacement person’s details to so we can transfer the ticket in their name.

Our After- Movie from Ecstatic Dance Festival 2023:

♥ FEEDBACK FROM PREVIOUS RETREATS/FESTIVALS:

“That was a very beautiful experience. An amazing journey inward & out. To express in a free space filled with joyful vibes & gorgeous smiling faces. In sound, in rhythm, in motion, in colour, in sweat, the Dance, the Soul.” Cath

“The smiles, the kind eyes, the bits when I lost myself in the music, the joy of the moments when it felt as if the whole room was jumping in unison.” Salvo

“ What a profound experience! The music was so beautiful … it carried me effortlessly inward facilitating a deep connection to Spirit, moving my body in a way that I felt I had little control over. It was magical! Thank you ” Ashley

“Thank you guys. This was an exceptional experience of deep healing, awakening, and opening. I feel so light, peaceful, and full of Love. Through the workshops we took, I touched some of my wounds, gently but deeply releasing and healing what was ready to be alchemised. Thank you to all the other lovely participants. Please organise the next one soon! ” Tanja

“ The workshop gave me the opportunity to go deeper into my body and discover new experiences which I hadn’t been able to tap into before. It was a good mix of different exercises, and I had a really blissful experience with the breathwork.” Vijay

” I feel so grateful I had the opportunity to attend this workshop. I felt that Seth, through his presence, allowing, way of being, created a very unique, safe space in which I could release, discover, explore and meet different aspects of myself. I was amazed how during the two days I was – often unexpectedly and gently – led to bring forth and embrace a child, an ancient woman, an animal, a spoiled brat, a mother, a lover, a goddess… Also through Seth’s guidance and suggestions I felt within very short spaces of time both my immense sorrow/yearning/pain and my immense joy/gratitude, realising how close to each other these seemingly opposites are. Today I feel a more solid belonging in the world, and a heightened awareness of the soles of my feet on the floor, like the earth, was more magnetic!” Maria

ECSTATIC DANCE FESTIVAL UK: https://ecstaticdancefestival.co.uk

Heart, soul, and depth.  A space for connection, authenticity, healing, joy, and real human meetings.

Whether you are looking for a way to better deal with the everyday stresses of life, get away from the City life and connect to Nature or whether you just simply want to try new body-mind based exercises, dance & laugh, meet and connect with new people, relax in the sauna, we invite you to explore the tools & practices during this deep dive of 5 days or weekend only and discover the positive benefits for yourself! 

Come join the dance!