“Something groundbreaking for our fans”: Iron Maiden turn only 2026 UK show into its own festival, including acts featuring band’s former members

Iron maiden onstage in 2025 — (Image credit: John McMurtrie)

Iron Maiden have turned their upcoming concert at Stevenage’s Knebworth House into a two-day festival.

The British heavy metal titans announced on Tuesday (February 17) that their scheduled gig on Saturday, July 11 will have a warm-up day the day before. It will feature what they call ‘Maiden World’, which includes a stage with live bands who have connections to Maiden, as well as a funfair, a museum celebrating their 50th anniversary and an expanded bar.

The weekend, which is being promoted as ‘Eddfest’ after famous mascot Eddie The Head, will crescendo with Maiden’s performance on the main stage. They’ll play material from their first nine studio albums, as they’ve done on the rest of their Run For Your Lives tour, which kicked off last year. Support will come from The Darkness, The Hu, Airbourne and The Almighty.

Manager Rod Smallwood comments: “After the monumental shows in the UK last year, we knew that if we were going to play the UK in 2026 it had to be very different. So we chose Knebworth Park as it gives us the space required – which is just not available in stadiums – to put together something groundbreaking for our fans by creating a Maiden World for them. We are excited to now reveal the details of this one-off event to celebrate the band’s 50 year career, which we are now calling Eddfest, because, as everyone knows, Eddie is the true star of the show!”

He adds: “We also know Maiden fans are basically a huge gang and we want to give them a weekend to remember at Knebworth. For the last couple of tours we have been arranging the Eddie Dive Bars for our fans, both pre- and post-show. Some of these took over the entire centres of towns with thousands of fans gathered there enjoying the fun, the music and each other’s company. So Eddfest is going to expand on that concept in a huge variety of ways, to create a truly unmissable Maiden World over the whole weekend!

“There will be a whole host of great music, great beer (of course!), lots of exciting and varied fun things to do, great souvenirs and merch, some unique and fantastic photo opportunities to create unbeatable Maiden memories, and of course, the true camaraderie that comes from being a Maiden fan.”

The bands playing on the Saturday will be Stray, Maiden United, Airforce, Tony Moore’s Awake, Hair Metal Glamageddom and one more act still to be announced. Maiden covered Stray’s 1970 single All In Your Mind in 1990, Maiden United are an acoustic Maiden cover band, Airforce feature former Maiden drummer Doug Sampson, and Tony Moore was briefly Maiden’s keyboardist in the late 70s.

Maiden kicked off their Run For Your Lives tour with a European run last summer, and the shows will pick back up again with another European leg starting in May. The Knebworth date will be the last European date on the trek, and the band say it will be their last UK show until “at least 2028”.

After the Knebworth gig, Maiden will bring the Run For Your Lives show to North, Central and South America. Go to their website to see all of their planned concerts.

As well as touring, Maiden are working on a documentary about their five decades as a band. Universal Pictures Content Group is producing the film, which will be released in theatres later this year.

Eddfest poster — (Image credit: Iron Maiden)

Louder’s resident Gojira obsessive was still at uni when he joined the team in 2017. Since then, Matt’s become a regular in Metal Hammer and Prog, at his happiest when interviewing the most forward-thinking artists heavy music can muster. He’s got bylines in The Guardian, The Telegraph, The Independent, NME and many others, too. When he’s not writing, you’ll probably find him skydiving, scuba diving or coasteering.

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