Yungblud is once again working towards making music accessible for everyone. 

Rock singer and songwriter Yungblud created his own music festival. The festival, called BLUDFEST, took place at Milton Keynes Bowl, England on August 11. The festival featured two stages and included fairground attractions, an art exhibition and a nod to Hawley Arms. Yungblud wanted the festival to feel like a whole world, not just another gig set at a festival.

A driving force for Yungblud to create this festival was making live music accessible to fans. In recent years, the ticket prices for live music events have increased significantly with large ticket corporations like Ticketmaster adding in layers of fees and ticket scalpers reselling tickets for thousands of dollars. 

He saw the effect of the rise in ticket prices first hand during his North American tour last year. In an interview with Billboard, Yungblud talked about how there were sections of empty seats where he had no control on what the price would be. He would talk to fans standing outside the venue listening to the concert because they could not afford tickets to actually attend. He has also discussed how, most of the time, the expensive prices and fees are not even going to the artist themselves. As a result, BLUDFEST was born.

He achieved his goal, getting tickets as low as possible to allow as many fans to attend. Tickets for the festival were capped at £49.50 or just $63. 

AEG was a co-promoter of the festival, which resulted in some pushback as many in his fanbase are anti-big corporations. However, for Yungblud to change the system, he wanted to go inside the corporate world and change it from there. Through the process of creating the festival, he was able to take control of parts of the process he would have never known about and saw what it actually costs to put on a festival. He saw things being charged higher than they should be and worked on getting them as low as possible. 

This is not the first time the artist has challenged concert ticket prices. During his 2023 North American tour, he launched a $20 ticket program. In a video posted announcing the program, he once again brought up how he saw many fans discussing how they could not afford tickets to live shows and it broke his heart. He wanted everyone to be able to come to his shows, so he wanted to do whatever he could to make that happen. 

In another move to make live music accessible and enjoyable for everyone, Yungblud also launched a program to help fans meet new friends who are attending BLUDFEST. The “Make A Friend Tent” was a physical tent for festival attendees to go to so attendees could meet up and enjoy the festival together. The idea was for those in the tent to want to be approached and be open to meeting new people. BLUDFEST also launched a Discord for festival attendees to chat online prior to the festival and plan to meet up at the tent. 

Besides Yungblud, BLUDFEST had a pretty stacked line-up. Also scheduled to perform were Lil Yachty, Soft Play, Nessa Barret, Lola Young, Jazmin Bean, NoahFinnce, Jesse Jo Stark, Landon Barker, Hannah Grae, Aziya and The Damned playing in the Icon Slot. The goal of the line-up was for young emerging artists who are doing their own thing. He didn’t want it to be a one genre-focused festival. 

BLUDFEST is not planned to be a one-year event. With plans in place to bring the festival to other regions across the world, this first year is just the beginning. 

Information about the festival can be found on its official website. You can also follow Yungblud on Instagram, X and TikTok to stay up to date on new music and upcoming tours.