| Victorious Festival | |
|---|---|
 Castle Stage in 2023 | |
| Genre | Rock,pop |
| Frequency | Annually |
| Venue | Portsmouth Historic Dockyard (2012–2013),Southsea Seafront (2014–present) |
| Country | England |
| Years active | 13, 2012 – present |
| Capacity | 80,000 |
| Website | www |
Victorious Festival is a three-day music festival held inPortsmouth, United Kingdom. It was founded in 2012.[1]
In its first year, the festival was named the Victorious Vintage Festival.[2] The first official Victorious Festival was 2013. The festival was held inPortsmouth Historic Dockyard, before moving to Southsea Seafront in 2014.[3]
Southsea Castle, Southsea Skatepark, theD-Day Museum and other local attractions are within the festival boundaries and are only accessible to ticket holders during that time.[4]
Victorious has a charitable arm called Victorious in the Community. The aim of this arm is give back to Portsmouth by supporting local charities and good causes in the area.[5] Part of the proceeds from ticket sales is given to the localD-Day Museum.[6]
The 2017 festival extended the duration to include a first night party headlined byMadness. Camping facilities were provided for the 2017 festival at a site at Farlington playing fields after camping on Southsea Common was ruled out.Portsmouth City Council has agreed to allow the festival until 2027 and hoped that the festival would bring over £5.8m a year for the local economy.[7] In 2017, a majority stake in the festival was sold to Global Entertainment with the hope that bigger acts might be secured in future.[8]Superstruct Entertainment, the live entertainment platform backed byProvidence Equity Partners, part-owns the festival after it entered definitive agreement for the acquisition of several live music and entertainment festivals fromGlobal Media & Entertainment in April 2019.[9]The festival is still run and operated by the same local team of people that founded it. The daily capacity of the 2019 festival was 65,000.[10]
The 2020 edition of the festival was cancelled in May 2020 due to theCOVID-19 pandemic, but returned the following year.[11]
The festival has a significant economic impact on Portsmouth each year. In 2022 the impact was measured at £15m[12] and in 2023 it was estimated to be "around £20m" and is a huge boost to tourism in Portsmouth.[13]
ThePortsmouth News reported that nearly 80,000 people attended the festival each day in 2024.
In 2024, the festival won Major Festival of the Year in the UK Live Awards.
In 2025, Irish bandThe Mary Wallopers had their set on the Friday cut as they displayed aPalestinian flag on stage. As a result, several other bands includingThe Last Dinner Party,The Academic and Cliffords cancelled their sets in protest.[14][15] The event organisers initially stated that the decision to end their set was made due to a "discriminatory" chant rather than the display of the flag, but later retracted this, apologised to the band and pledged to make a "substantial donation" to humanitarian relief efforts in Gaza.[16][17]
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