Leeds Festival 2024: Festival founder Melvin Benn talks new stage and acts ahead of Bramham Park event

With less than 100 days to go until the likes of Liam Gallagher, Lana Del Rey and Blink-182 take to the stage at Bramham Park outside Leeds, the founder of the festival today (Monday, May 20) took the opportunity to announce a new stage as he talked about this year’s edition of Leeds Festival.

Melvin Benn, managing director of Festival Republic, who organises Leeds and its twin festival Reading, visited the country house at Bramham Park to talk about how work for this year’s event is coming along as well as to reveal some exciting news.

Speaking to Yorkshire Evening Post, Mr Benn said: “It’s all coming along really well - the teams here [at Leeds] are very focused on all of the details.

“They all work really well together and bring together what is for me the best music festival in the world.”

The festival announced a brand-new stage, Chevron, earlier this year which will be focusing on dance music and hip hop and headlined by The Prodigy, Skrillex and Sonny Fodera.

It will be joined by another new stage addition, The Aux, which was revealed at the press event at the stately home.

The Aux will be a music-free stage focusing on digital creators and the first acts to take on the new stage includes The Useless Hotline, Antics With Ash, In Ayamé We Trust and The M1 Podcast, with more to be announced.

Benn said: “One of the things a festival has to do is to maintain a relevance to its audience, and I think that the Aux Stage really represents a cultural phenomenon that is becoming mainstream for young people in a way that television once was for older people.

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“Young people are getting their information, their news, their entertainment provided for them by content creators, who are increasingly becoming part of what is appearing on our stages anyways.

“It’s almost a no-brainer that I had to do it because I think its really important that we have the opportunity for these cultural icons who are only normally seen behind a screen to get the opportunity to actually talk to their audiences face-to-face.”

Leeds Festival is set to return to Bramham Park this bank holiday August, with bands and artists such as Catfish & The Bottlemen, Raye, Fontaines D.C and Renee Rapp already announced.

But the festival has long championed new and up-and-coming acts on the BBC Introducing Stage, which launched in 2008, and the first local artists to play at the stage in 2024 are Yorkshire-based Ellur, Sun King, Jodie Langford and Delilah Bon.

Running two of the UK’s biggest festivals simultaneously is not an easy task. But when the music starts, it’s all worth it for Melvin: “The culmination of it all - bringing it all together is massively rewarding for me. Everything about being able to bring Leeds Festival to life is rewarding.”

For those going to the festival for the first time, he advised: “Come with your eyes wide open - come for the best weekend of your life because you have no idea how much it’s going to excite and challenge you and push you to the limit.

“It’s gonna give you highs and lows and it’s gonna give you amazing friendships and the opportunity to see amazing bands.”