If your ideal festival line-up veers towards the impossible to pigeonhole, Newhaven has a new date for your diary. Launching on Saturday 25 July, The Port Of Cool will take over the Sussex harbour town’s industrial landscape, bringing together an eclectic mix of experimental music, DJs, local food, craft beer and independent traders; think Canning-Town-by-the-Sea and you get the picture.
The festival is the spawn of Brighton institution Family Store, who have teamed up with Look Again Newhaven as part of the Towner BN9 programme to support a line up of ‘IYKYK-type’ artists operating at the more adventurous end of the musical spectrum. From psych-rock, avant-pop, folk, garage punk, jazz, electronica and an light dusting of anarchistic joy, it’s the kind of music that rewards curiosity for a festival built around discovery rather than familiarity.
The biggest hype probably belongs to MEMORIALS, whose album All Clouds Bring Not Rain brings together psych, free jazz, kosmische and experimental pop, and Paddy Steer, with his collision of homemade instruments, space-funk rhythms and gloriously eccentric performance art. Garage-punk trio The Baby Seals plus Minor Dents, M. Woodroe, Nick Granata, Charlie Keen’s Silver Birch, CRAB and Nuclear Whale, Ian Parton (of the Go! Team) join in the fun with visuals from local legend Innerstrings.
Phew! Lucky for Source, they’ve compiled a Port of Cool Mixtape to get up to speed with all this underground awesomeness, I mean, just in case – but of course you knew all those bands already, right?
All this among independent traders, Abyss craft beer, a predictably phenomenal range of food stalls and just an easy bus ride from Brighton. Feels almost stupid not to, right?
The Sidings, Newhaven
Saturday 25 Jul 2026, 1:00 PM – 11:15 PM
Tickets:
£25 Early bird
£30 full price
£20 for Bn9 residents.
