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This summer, history was made when DJs played at the Royal Naval College for the first time at the Labyrinth on the Thames music festival. In 2026 the festival isn’t only coming back to the UNESCO World Heritage Site, but it could massively increase in size.
The dance and electronic festival took place during the first two weekends of August this year, with DJs Black Coffee, Solomun and Fisher blasting out house and techno sets to thousands of punters in the historic surroundings. Band Empire of the Sun headlined too, with a live set.
The 2025 series saw six sold-out shows, each with a capacity of 10,000. In 2026 Labyrinth wants to increase its number of shows by 50 percent, from six to nine.
Starting out as a club night in Notting Hill in 2017, Labyrinth threw its inaugural festival in the historic digs in 2025. However it wasn’t the first time Greenwich’s Royal Naval College has hosted concerts. The Greenwich Summer Sessions festival has been held at the site since 2011, however Trinity Laban, the music and dance college based on the campus, tried to get its licence cancelled in 2023 after complaining that noise from sound checks was disturbing the students.
For 2025 and future events a rule was imposed that Trinity Laban and the University of Greenwich would have to be consulted about the dates of the events. Local councillors will consider Labyrinth’s proposal at a licensing sub-committee hearing on November 12.
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