2026 Bent and Bongs Beer Bash – Full Details
Opening Times
The opening times for the 2026 festival are:
|
Opening Times |
Admission |
|
|---|---|---|
|
Thursday 5 February, 2026 |
6pm – 11pm |
£3 |
|
Friday 6 February, 2026 |
4pm – 11pm |
£6 |
|
Saturday 7 February, 2026 |
12 noon – 9pm |
£6 |
Thursday opens 1 hour early at 5pm for sponsors only.
£1 Discount for CAMRA members. Bring your card – you won’t get the discount without it.
Free admission Saturday after 6pm.
Venue and How To Get There
This year’s beer festival takes place at The Atherton Roller Rink.
What Three Words
If you use What Three Words (and if you don’t you should) ///free.spring.teams will drop you right on the doorstep.
For full and comprehensive directions for how to find us by trains and buses head to our How To Find Us page.
Beers
The beer list usually starts to take shape around a month before the festival. As soon as we have something we’ll update the details here. It will be good. Very VERY good.
Music and Entertainment
There is a great line-up for 2026. Friday night in particular is MASSIVE. It’s the first time in the festival’s history that we’ve booked such a big band.
Thursday
Lucy May Music
A young, very talented, singer and pianist, who sings stripped back raw covers of some of your favourite tracks using a mix of backing music and keyboard to create an intimate yet dynamic sound for all to enjoy.
Friday
The Flying Pandas.
They’re big folks!! A very experienced and established group, comprising of guitarists and drummer with multiple talented singers to ensure the best experience covering a variety of indie/soft rock music with plenty of songs that we all know and love to get you dancing the night away.
Saturday
The Stand Ins (noon – 3pm ish)
A father and daughter duo who are Atherton locals, combining the strong and experienced voice of Lee and the incredible vocal range from Summer they create a great experience from songs you sing will along with to songs that will simply make you stop in awe.
James Carrol (3pm – 6pm ish)
Another young, up and coming artist, but who already has huge experience, playing his guitar, he has amassed a wide variety of music on his set list which comprises of 60’s to modern day.
Fullfil (6pm – 9pm ish)
A male acoustic duo with music from across the decades this pair have been together for a number of years and have created a partnership that will have you entertained from start to finish.
Food and Festival Fodder
The festival will have a wonderful selection of pies, sausages, and all things yummy. The perfect accompaniments to a couple of pints. Come thirsty and come hungry.
New To The Festival – How It All Works and Getting Your First Pint
If this is your first beer festival DON’T PANIC! We’ve got your back. Here’s how it all works.
When you enter the festival we will give you your souvenir glass. We can’t stress this enough. Look after your glass. Your glass is your drinking vessel for the whole session and is yours to keep when you head for home. Treat your glass as your friend. Nay. It’s more than a friend. Treat your glass as a loved one. Hold it carefully. Keep it out of harm’s way. There are no spare glasses kept behind the bars so when you turn up for a drink you need your glass.
Remember! No glass = no beer!
Do not put your glass on the barrier around the roller rink itself. It’s too easy for it to be knocked off and break. A broken glass means no glass. Remember! No glass = no beer!
The festival runs on tokens for payment for beers. Once you have your glass you need to buy some tokens. The token desk is on your left as you walk into the main part of the roller rink and the cheerful people there will be happy to sell you a bunch of tokens.
Remember! No tokens = no beer!
Once you have your tokens, head for your bar of choice. Please do not try to use cash. The bar staff cannot accept it and will send you to the token desk to buy tokens. No matter how much we say this we guarantee that by the end of the festival more than one person will have tried to pay with cash and will have been dispatched back to the token desk to buy tokens.
This is a beer festival. A festival of beer and other drinks. If you are used to walking into a pub and ordering a pint of tasteless fizzy pop (any of the big brands) you will find the drinks here come in a massive variety of tastes. We really want you to have a good time and not buy something that you don’t like the taste of. Ask the really nice people behind the bars for a taste and they will give you a teeny tiny bit of the drink you fancy trying. If you like it you can buy some. If you don’t, well now, isn’t that a better way to find out that you don’t like something rather than buy a pint and then wonder what to do with it for the next half hour. Nobody’s tastes are the same. We absolutely guarantee that there will be drinks here that you don’t like. And we absolutely doubly guarantee that there are drinks here that you will totally love. If you really love a beer, tell the nice people behind the bars and ask for a recommendation. It can become a whole beer adventure. What’s not to love about that?
Tokens
The festival runs on a token system for buying beer. None of the bars will accept cash. It’s tokens only. Yeah – The original beer tokens huh??
You buy tokens from the Token Desk. It’s on your left as you walk into the main part of the roller rink. You can’t miss it. There are people there selling tokens and it has a big sign over it saying TOKENS.
The token desk will accept payments in cash, card, and contactless.
If you have unused tokens left at the end of the night the token desk will cash them in for you. There is also a container there if you want to delete your leftover shrapnel to the festival’s charity.
This is important so we are putting it in big red letters. TO CASH IN YOUR UNUSED TOKENS AT THE END OF THE NIGHT YOU MUST DO THIS WITHIN 20 MINUTES OF THE BARS CLOSING.
This is also important so we are putting it in big red letters. TOKENS ARE ONLY VALID ON THE DAY THAT YOU BUY THEM. ANY TOKENS BOUGHT ON THURSDAY ARE NOT VALID ON FRIDAY OR SATURDAY. ANY TOKENS BOUGHT ON FRIDAY ARE NOT VALID ON SATURDAY. If you have leftover tokens remember to cash them in before going home.
Tickets
There are no advance ticket sales for general admission.
The festival is pay on the door on entry only.
OK – You’ve seen someone get in with a ticket. Why are we saying there are no advance ticket sales. What the hell?
These tickets are sponsors tickets. We give our sponsors some general admission tickets as part of the package for sponsoring us. The number varies by the type of package. That’s it. There’s no mystery. No secret Illuminati fostering conspiracy theories on the beer drinkers of Atherton and Tyldesley. It’s just sponsors who are sponsoring the festival. And we may as well throw this in here. If you are coming with a bunch of people why not consider our personal sponsorship package that’s new for 2026?
Thank You to our Wonderful Sponsors
You know who you are and we couldn’t do this without you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.