Hop City Beer Festival 2027

With The Old Flax Store’s carpark free of food trucks, and the last of the empty kegs en route back to the brewery for refilling, Northern Monk can close the book on Hop City 2026 and celebrate a job well done by… releasing tickets for next year’s festival. Organised much? Or gluttons for punishment? As it happens, 12+ months really is what it takes to organise a shindig of epic proportions. In fact, the wheels are already in motion for Hop City 2027, when the Leeds-based beer festival will double capacity and increase the number of breweries pouring from 35 to 50 in celebration of its tenth birthday. 

To date, Hop City has always taken place at Northern Monk’s flagship taproom, The Old Flax Store, with the exception of the two peak-COVID years when operations moved to the brewery’s production facility, on nearby Sydenham Road, to accommodate safe outdoor socialising. However, with the brewery now running at max capacity, and the Old Flax Store lacking space into which it can expand, neither venue is equipped to accommodate a bigger-than-ever-before crowd. As such, the Northern Monk team has been looking for a suitable site to host Hop City’s tenth birthday bash. 

At the time of my conversation with Cal Richardson, festival and events manager at Northern Monk, he’s just signed the dotted line with Project House, a gig venue by the names behind the legendary Belgrave Music Hall, and Headrow House. “We're really excited to be working with Northern Monk on 2027's Hop City,” says a spokesperson for Project House. “The team behind Project House have all worked with Northern Monk on projects over the years but the opportunity for us all to collaborate on the same event is really special, we can't wait.” 

With Project House offering double the space on offer at The Old Flax store, the potential of the venue to host more entertainment, more food vendors and a bigger variety of drinks providers is not lost on Cal. “There’s definitely going to be entertainment that isn't just music. There's probably going to be some out of the box thinking from us. Maybe we bring in some elements of our Fresh Fest festival, which is all about graffiti and street art. We’ve floated the idea of doing some skate jams over the weekend. We’ve had so many ideas over the last ten years, so finally having the space to really play with them will be really cool.”

One of the great joys of Hop City is that, although the festival lineup is different every year, enough stays the same about the event itself for it to be loved, missed, and looked forward to consistently. Technical director and co-founder Brian Dixon maintains that, ten years in, Hop City is still the place to meet your heros in beer. "My personal highlight was having Sam Calagione and Dogfish Head involved a few years ago," he says. "I got to collaborate with them on a fantastic West Coast DIPA. He was an all-round great guy and quite the karaoke performer!" 

To this, founder Russel Busset adds “I’m genuinely stoked for Hop City 27’. A big part of what makes this festival truly brilliant is that you know what you’re going to get, but it’s always nice to switch things up occasionally. A change of venue for our 10th birthday will bring a fresh dynamic with it, and more breweries than ever. This means an even bigger representation of breweries local to us as well as some of the stars of hop forward beer from across the world. To have Sam from Other Half, Sam from Dogfish Head and John from Alchemist in the same room for a beer festival is something we could have only dreamed of when we started the festival in 2017. Hopefully they’ll be up for some karaoke afterwards too."

Get your tickets here: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/hop-city-10th-birthday-tickets-1977384014818