Canterbury Festivals Information

Canterbury International Festival

Canterbury's acclaimed and ever growing arts festival, which runs annually across two weeks every October, is fast catching up with the success of the Edinburgh Festival. Festival visitor numbers for 2007 were around 80,000. A host of theatre, parades, street performance and events both free and fee paying are pulling in both national and international crowds.

Comedy events, a Canterbury Festival Fringe, World Music events, special events for families and children, talks, films, outdoor eat outs and more are all part of the Canterbury Festival package. The city has the venues to back it up too, with two superb theatres and a cutting edge contemporary cinema at the Gulbenkian, plus a choice of art galleries, museums and numerous picturesque villages around Canterbury all with venues hosting events during the two week extravaganza in October.

For details on this year's Canterbury Festival check the webguide right for details. The Canterbury Festival ranks as the South East's top cultural arts event.

Canterbury Festival Office, Christ Church Gate, The Precincts, Canterbury, Kent, CT1 2EE. For General Information Tel. 01227 452853 : For Events Booking Tel. 01227 378188. See too details for the annual June Stour Music Festival (webguide right) which takes places 10 miles outside of Canterbury. This is a festival of early music performed in All Saints Boughton Aluph pilgrims church, a venue renowned for its superb acoustics.

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Kent Beer Festival & Canterbury Euro Fair

First held under a marquee in Dane John gardens in central Canterbury in 1975, the Kent Beer festival now has around 130 real ales (the first only had 30) on its menu in a huge barn on a farm just a couple of miles south of Canterbury. Shuttle buses run around every 15 to 30 minutes from Canterbury bus station (near Canterbury East Railway Station) to the Festival Venue. CAMRA members and local volunteers run this top British beer festival, one of the country's oldest. The best of Kent real ales feature - see the Kent Beer Festival webguide right for listings of real ales you can sample here, produced all over Kent. It's a corker of a beer festival. Free parking is on-site. Sensible footwear recommended on barn floor.

See also the webguide right for Canterbury's Euro Fair. Essentially a Christmas Market, but with plenty of arts, music and general bonhomie going on, the Euro Fair takes place on Canterbury's great garden space, Dane John just near Canterbury East Station.

Kent Beer Festival, Merton Farm, Merton Lane (off B2068 to Hythe), Canterbury CT4 7BA. Tel. 01227 463478.

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