Chichester’s ‘Back Then Festival’ is Just What The City Needs
On Saturday 8th August 2026, we attended ‘Back Then Festival’. It is the first year of this home-grown festival’s life and it felt really special. With a lineup featuring ‘Toploader’, ‘Tinchy Stryder’, ‘DJ Luck & MC Neat’ and ‘Ultrabeat’, for one day only, it made Chichester feel like a party destination!
Back Then Festival, Westgate Fields Chichester
It had a great range of food options including Chock Shop, which had a wide range of flavoured brownies. I went for the Black Forest which was delicious!
A real treat about this festival is the wide selection of local musicians who were performing. There was dedicated stage for up and coming young performers from CreativeBeatz and it was really great to see. With so much talent in the area, opportunities like this are spot-on for an event like this. Supporting the main line up were also other local performers who had won V2 Radio’s ‘Battle of The Bands’ competition.
Toploader
The first of the main sets was from ‘Toploader’. They played a range of songs from their catalogue as well as a few covers including ‘Mr Brightside’, which lead singer Joe Washbourne, joked with the crowd: “Kids seem to know this song,” before adding, “It completely fries my brain. It’s fucking fifty years old.”
They left ‘Dancing In The Moonlight’ till the very end of their set which really got the crowds energy up, and admittedly was really cool to see performed in person after hearing the song so many times on the radio growing up.
Tinchy Stryder
Next up was East London’s ‘Tinchy Stryder’. The concept of Tinchy Stryder in Chichester really amused me for some reason and I think he was an excellent choice for the first year of this festival because of that. His performance was incredible. He had everyone on their feet with classics such as ‘Number 1’, ‘Never Leave You’ and ‘East Side Geezer’. He’s a true performer who can really own a stage.
Tinchy Stryder
DJ Luck & MC Neat
Musical duo, DJ Luck & MC Neat, brought the energy to a whole new level. They played house and garage tunes that were banger after banger. A personal highlight of the whole festival was hearing ‘A Little Bit of Luck’ performed live and I’ve still got it stuck in my head now, it was wicked. The whole crowd were getting into it, the atmosphere was superb.
DJ Luck & MC Neat
Ferris Wheel at Back Then Festival
Ultrabeat
Ending the evening was ‘Ultrabeat’ (Ian Redman & MC Cover) who finished the night off with a bang. They played a collection of club classics and finished with their iconic ‘Pretty Green Eyes’ complete with a formation of illuminated drones creating a green eye in the sky. It was a fantastic way to round off such a wonderful event.
Events like this are just what Chichester needs, and the warm reception that the large attendance draws proves that. I really hope this is just the beginning of Back Then Festival and that it makes a return in 2027 perhaps over multiple days. I’m keen to see the lineup for next year if it does make a return!
Thank you to Back Then Festival for providing us with complimentary tickets in exchange for our honest review.
