Collective Spotlight: Madruga
In this series we spotlight up-and-coming collectives who are paving their own way while driving the culture forward.
Madruga is mostly known as a festival, but that framing doesn’t quite capture what’s really going on. At its core, Madruga is a group of friends still in their twenties who decided to build the party they felt was missing. In doing so, they’ve created one of the most exciting events in the UK cultural calendar and a tightly woven community that expands year on year.
The group of friends behind Madruga met while studying event production and music at university in Bristol. All of them were obsessed with music and spoiled for choice with club culture in the city, but when it came to festivals they noticed a gap in the market.
“Every prominent festival at the time, like Houghton, We Out Here, Outlook, had their sound and their audience,” says Sammi Aljak, creative director and programmer for Madruga. “No one had ever plucked the best artists from those scenes and put them together knowing where they cross over.”
That’s how bridging scenes became the foundation of Madruga Festival.
The crew started devising the concept at university, and they soon felt compelled to make it a reality. They hunted for the perfect venue, and when they came across Baskerville Hall in the Black Mountains of Wales they made the leap and put down a deposit for a three-day event. The year was 2022. They had no blueprint, no financial backing, and very little margin for error.
“Two weeks before the festival, we were alone, without any resources, and heading into a catastrophe,” Sammi says. “We’d meet in 'Spoons every day after work and sit there until 11 pm trying to get this show together, looking at the numbers, the money we didn’t have. We’d sold 80 tickets. We thought we’d have to cancel and probably declare bankruptcy at 23 years old. But we looked at each other and decided to just fucking do it. Let’s just see what happens.”
At the last minute they sold more tickets, and even though they lost some money, the festival itself was awesome.
Baskerville Hall is part of the magic. This Grade II listed mansion is where the Hound of the Baskervilles is set. Madruga takes full advantage, with two stages in the beautifully manicured grounds outside creating a day festival energy, then at night everything moves indoors to become a debaucherous mansion party across two club rooms. There’s also a chill-out area, a living room with karaoke, two pubs and (if you look hard enough) after-parties in the luxurious bedrooms where the DJs stay.
Most people camp outside but there’s the option to sleep in dorm rooms in the mansion too. But apart from the mansion, Madruga’s USP was in the musical curation.
“I went in on the line-up because we had to turn heads,” Sammi says. “It was ropey as fuck, we were 23 years old, 8 of us running the show like headless chickens, I don’t know how we did it, but something just clicked. We were onto something.”
From that point on, Madruga stopped being just an event and started becoming a network; a growing, interconnected group of artists, friends and attendees who all contribute to its identity.
DJs don’t just arrive, play their set and leave. They stay for the entire weekend. They invite their mates and dance in the crowd, supporting one another, and becoming part of the social fabric. It creates an environment where the line between artist and audience starts to blur.
“You play better when your best mates are dancing in the front row,” Sammi says.
This energy radiates outward, shaping the atmosphere of the whole event, and as the festival enters it’s fourth year, that sense of intimacy has only grown stronger.
The Madruga team shape it by investing in the in-between moments: wellness areas, hot tubs, cold plunges, yoga, meditation, arts and crafts and communal spaces.
It reflects a wider shift in how younger collectives are approaching nightlife. Community isn’t built solely through high-energy moments, but through balance. People need space to get to know one another, and that uplifts the dance floor later on.
The collective has achieved a huge amount in a short space of time. In just a few years, they’ve gone from a near-collapse in a pub to building one of the most talked-about grassroots festivals in the UK underground.
But their success isn’t built on scale, or hype, or even the line-ups alone. It’s built on friendship, blind faith and self-belief.
Madruga is still evolving and expanding, but its core remains unchanged. It’s a group of friends with sick taste in music building something together and bringing everyone else along for the ride.
Madruga is a 1000-capacity, 3-day mansion party & music festival set amongst the Black Mountains of Wales from July24th - 27th 2026 at Baskerville Hall, Hay-On-Wye, HR3 5LE. Buy your tickets here.
