Expanded Version of Hydrogen-Powered Stage ‘HYDRO’ Returns to Boomtown 2026

The HYDRO stage will welcome about 20,000 dance music enthusiasts this year.

Many music festivals and live music events are adopting sustainable practices to reduce carbon emissions and do their bit in making this planet a better and greener place. Keeping this in mind, the UK’s Boomtown festival has announced that it will be expanding its “world’s first” hydrogen-powered stage. Now renamed as HYDRO XL, the arena will have a capacity of 20,000, enabling the festival to host 12,000 more people in the arena in 2026 compared to last year. Operating on hydrogen fuel cell technology, the GYDRO XL stage is among the first festival stages to be free of emissions. This zero-carbon stage will only release water vapor.

“Seeing the smaller HYDRO stage in action last year at Boomtown was incredible. Personally, I spent a lot of time behind the stage as it was fascinating to see. Where you would normally hear diesel generators, there was just silence, with nothing but water vapour as the by-product, and the water was so pure you could drink it,” said Boomtown’s co-founder Luke Mitchell, as per Mixmag. “It inspired us to take the leap and develop the idea into one of our main stages this year.”

EDM superstar Skrillex, Eats Everything B2B TSHA, NOTION, SHERELLE (AV Show), UKG pioneer DJ EZ, and a DJ set from Groove Armada have been confirmed for Boomtown 2026 at HYDRO XL. [IVY] vs [SAFYRE], Marlon Hoffstadt, Rossi. B2B Silva Bumpa, Four Tet, and 999999999 (AV Show), among other thrilling acts, are also on the bill. 

This stage is just one of the ways Boomtown is going green! The festival revealed that the Boomtown HQ team has planted more than 500 trees “on the southern section of the Giant Tree Circle.” “The Giant Tree Circle is a community planting project spanning England, Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland and Ireland – thousands of trees, tens of thousands of hands, a living legacy that will outlast all of us,” Boomtown wrote on Instagram.

Boomtown Chapter Five is scheduled to take place at the Matterley Estate near Winchester in the UK from August 12 to 16, 2026.

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