Category: Festivals

We’re pleased to announce our 50th Steel City Beer & Cider Festival is now confirmed! Our team of volunteers on the organising committee are well into the planning process for this event and are able to share some details to help you look forward to visiting or even getting involved! The dates for your diary are 21-24 October 2026.

Once again the festival is being held at the atmospheric Kelham Island Museum, a venue full of character with bars, food vendors, games, live music and more spread across several areas including the upper hall, Victorian courtyard and Stone Garden.

The bars will all together boast a range of about 200 cask ales, all of which we aim to have on sale on the first night and available until they run out, along with a list of 70 other craft beers in keg which will be on rotation. There will also be 30 different ciders and perries to try.

On the Wednesday evening we’ll be judging the Champion Beer of Sheffield & District competition and announcing the winners, Thursday night we have live music from Highway Child and Friday night on stage is Soul Battalion.

Saturday afternoon as usual Loxley Silver Band will be playing and Kelham Rapper will be dancing, after which we have The 88s on stage.

It is expected that there will also be demonstration runs of the museum’s River Don Steam Engine at various times during the festival.

A range of food vendors will be open throughout the festival including Yuleys Bratwurst, Sunshine Pizza, Smith’s Fish & Chips, Caribbean fusion, Taco Trailer, Cheese Factor and Fairfax Chocolatiers & Spirits. They will be spread across the upper hall, Victorian Courtyard (outside marquee) and Stone Garden (outside the keg bar).

The festival will be open on Wednesday 21 October from 5pm (4pm for CAMRA members and industry folk) to 10:30pm, Thursday 22 and Friday 23 October from 11:30am to 10:30pm then finally Saturday 24 October from 11am to 9pm.

We also have a programme of special talks, tours and tastings you can choose to add to your festival experience which we reccomend booking in advance:

• Wednesday 19:00 – Beer & Music pairing with Pete Brown: Join award-winning beer writer and broadcaster Pete Brown for a one-of-a-kind audio-visual beer tasting experience, based on the fascinating research behind his latest book – Tasting Notes: The art and science of pairing beer and music.
• Thursday 11:30 – Little Chicago: A guided historical walk in Sheffield’s Little Chicago Quarter. We will explore both the pub heritage aspects of the area plus the streets which feature in the book, ‘Sheffield 1925: Gang Wars and Wembley Glory,’ with a narrative explaining how Sheffield briefly became the most turbulent city in Britain because of an escalating gang war involving the Park Brigade, Mooney Gang, the Gas Tank Gang and many others. The walk will be led by ‘Sheffield’s Real Heritage Pubs’ editor, Dave Pickersgill and local historian and writer, John Stocks.
• Thursday 17:00 – Kelham Island Brewery: This talk will be led by four key members of the team at Kelham Island Brewery: Tom Clay (Sales & Brand Director) and three of the Owner/Directors: Jim Harrison, James O’Hara and Simon Webster. The presenters will look back to the history of the Fat Cat and Kelham Island Brewery, lauding the pioneering work of Dave Wickett and celebrating the long-term influences of both the pub and the brewery on todays UK Indie beer scene before looking to the future.
• Thursday 19:00 – Abbeydale Brewery: A tutored beer tasting and discussion led by experts from the oldest established brewery in Sheffield, which as of 2024 is wholly employee owned. This event will explore the depth and breadth of the Abbeydale range as they celebrate their 30th anniversary. Last year (2025) Abbeydale produced over 200 Bbl./week of which over 75% was cask. They produce at least one new beer each week, including both the Funk Dungeon and Dr.Morton’s brands. The latter is a tribute to the owners with the former highlighting their barrel ageing project.

Entry is free on Wednesday, £5 on Thursday and £8 on Friday and Saturday. If you are a CAMRA member show your current valid membership card on the gate to enjoy free entry at all sessions – if you were thinking of joining CAMRA it will pay to do so before the festival! There is no advance booking required, just turn up and pay on the gate. Entry is of course subject to capacity so get down early if you can!

Additionally you’ll need to buy a souvenir glass for £3 which all your drinks will be served in, you can either keep it to take home or return it at the end for a refund. We’ll also have printed programmes available for £1 for those that want one, alternatively all the same information including the beer list will be available on the festival website.

The festival bars will take a choice of card/contactless or token payments for drinks, if you only have cash you can buy £5 token cards from the sales desks in the marquee and upper hall.

SCAN THE QR CODES BELOW TO BOOK THE SPECIAL EVENT ADD ONS

SPECIAL BEERS

We had three special commemorative beers from local breweries.

This year the charity collecting donations at the festival was the Childrens’ Hospital Charity and the beer marking this was Pride of Yorkshire, from Bradfield Brewery. The name refers to the upcoming Pride of Yorkshire Sculpture Trail taking place in 2026 celebrating the charity’s 150th anniversary and will feature 150 large lion and lioness sculptures, and 150 smaller lion cub sculptures positioned across South Yorkshire, each telling a unique story and designed by professional artists and community groups. For details of this visit prideofyorkshire.org.

We’re celebrating 50 years of our Beer Matters magazine and here Abbeydale Brewery helped out to mark the occasion with a dry hopped special edition of a regular beer badged up with an actual magazine cover!

Finally, Neepsend Brewery helped with a special pumpclip for a cask version of their Alcis session IPA to mark the memory of Kevin Thompson, our social secretary and press officer who unexpectedly passed away recently.

THE FESTIVAL OPENING

This started with the unlikely trio of our festival organiser Paul Crofts, Sheffield Childrens Hospital Charity’s Holly and Jon McClure from Reverend & The Makers (who have a new single out called Haircut) behind a bar pulling a pint of the Pride of Yorkshire beer.

Attention then moved to the stage where after welcoming everyone to the festival, Paul introduced Megan from Beer Central who announced the winners of our Champion Beer of Sheffield & District competition and presented the certificates to the winning brewers.

The competition had been judged earlier in the afternoon by six teams of invited guests at a blind tasting.

Finally, back at the bar we had Dan & Martha from the Brewery of St Mars of the Desert with their German Stichfass casks filled with one of their new beers, Fledermaus, for a special tapping and pouring. A long queue soon formed with the beer selling out quite quickly!

Also present at the festival opening and beer judging was Dale from the Great British Pub Crawl, a social media content creator whose videos are available across many platforms charting his progress visiting as many pubs across the country as possible. With a fair old audience built up he takes the opportunity to champion the British pub and recently launched an online petition asking the government to give pubs a fairer deal, which complements CAMRA’s own lobbying nicely!

LITTLE CHICAGO WALKING TOUR

On Thursday morning 19 lucky ticket holders embarked on a guided walk around places in Kelham Island featured in the “Little Chicago” local history booklet (which was available to buy at the festival) with a pub stop at the Crow along the way. The tour and talk finished at the beer festival.

Thursday was also the first full day of the festival with all the food traders open alongside the bars and games.

A number of ticket holders enjoyed a tutored tasting event with Bradfield Brewery in a private room at the festival. This involved the brewers talking their audience through a number of beers in their range with their biggest selling Farmers Blonde and their whisky barrel aged Belted Galloway Stout among the 5 beers included.

Thursday night saw the live music programme kick off with the Retrobates starring Kitty Noir taking to stage whilst on Friday night it was Soul Battalion playing to a packed house! On Saturday we had Loxley Silver Band playing in the afternoon, Kelham Rappers dancing outside afterwards then at tea time on stage was Blythe Power.

FOOD TRADERS

The festival featured a number of street food vendors outside in the courtyard including Carribean Fusion serving flavourful authentic Jamaican street food such as jerk chicken wraps and Mutton curry, Yuleys Bratwurst with a range of German sausages on the BBQ, Yorkshire Crepes serving pancakes with various sweet and savoury filllings including some cocktail themed options, Sunshine Pizza Oven and finally Bonnie and Clyde slinging out deep fried Italian snacks.

Meanwhile inside we had Cheese Factor from Chesterfield indoor market boasting a refrigerated display filled with a whole range of cheeses along with pork pies serving up Ploughmans Platters and sandwiches.

Also inside was Fairfax chocolatiers with a range of fancy choccies and signature spirits. There was an option to combine the two with a cup of boozy hot chocolate!

BARS

The festival boasted a range of over 250 different beers in cask, keg, bottle and can plus cider, perry and mead spread across 4 areas.

The upper hall featured cask ales from brewers at the lower end of the alphabet (A-L) whilst the marquee featured cask ales from brewers at the other end of the alphabet (M-Y). Both those main areas had a cider bar and a bottle/can bar.

New this year was the Guest Brewers’ Room with three bars hosted by the breweries themselves with beers on both cask and keg. Pouring beers here were Radio City Beer Works, Turning Point and Ossett.

Meanwhile a wander beyond the courtyard through the Hawley Gallery (exhibition of knives and tools!) took you to the dedicated keg bar with some rather interesting craft beers pouring from a wall of 27 taps.

THE RIVER DON STEAM ENGINE

This is something the museum is well known for so it was arranged for it to be fire up for a demo at set times each day of the festival from Thursday onwards and always proves to be a popular attraction!

OTHER DISTRACTIONS!

We also had our tombola (every “1” is a winner!), classic pub games, CAMRA membership sign up stand and book shop.

GLASSWARE

All the drinks were served in commemorative glasses featuring this years festival logo with a choice of two designs – a classic pint glass with Hendersons Relish artwork and a beautiful stemmed half pint with Bradfield Brewery 20th anniversary artwork.

THE UNOFFICIAL FESTIVAL FRINGE

We get loads of beer tourists coming to Sheffield for the festival who are also keen to experience the great pubs the city is famous for with a whole load within walking distance of the festival venue including the Fat Cat and Kelham Island Tavern. Some of the pub ran events during festival week, for example Shakespeares Ale & Cider House had a tap takeover and the Harlequin hosted live music.

THANK YOU!

Thanks to all those visitors that came an enjoyed the festival and drank all the beer & cider, thanks to those that donated prizes for the tombola and thanks to all our sponsors for your support.

An even bigger thanks to all the volunteers that gave up their time to help organise, build, run, staff and pack up the festival. We move into an empty venue several days before the festival opens building it all from scratch and of course after we close Saturday night it all requires dismantling and packing away before the museum opens to the public again!

There is also of course months of publicising the festival in advance and we had a small army of volunteers distributing promotional beer mats, posters and flyers!

THANKS FROM THE TOMBOLA

The organisers of the recent 49^th Steel City Beer & Cider Festival would like to thank the following for donating items to the festival tombola and to sell in support of Sheffield Children’s Hospital Charity:- Wayne Brierley RIP, Abbeydale Brewery, Blue Bee Brewery, Kelham Island Tavern, Paul & Tina Crofts, Ossett Brewery, Terry Palmer, Fairfax Distillers & Chocolatiers, Paul Manning, The Wellington, Dave Pickersgill, Nigel & Emlyn Tasker, Bernie Hunter, Crown & Glove, Loxley Brewery and everyone who donated anonymously.  Apologies if we have missed anyone. – Andy Morton.

>> VISIT THE FESTIVAL WEBSITE HERE <<

Sheffield’s 49th annual Steel City Beer & Cider Festival takes place at Kelham Island Museum from 15 to 18 October 2025, here is a guide to what is planned this year!

As previous years, the two main areas of the festival are the upper hall and marquee, both which feature a huge cask ale bar, cider & perry bar plus a can/bottle bar which will feature some low/no alcohol options.

There will also be a room featuring three guest brewers hosting their own bars (as well as Bradfield who this year will be in the main hall upstairs) and a room dedicated to craft beer in kegs. The guest brewers are Radio City, Turning Point and Ossett.

The upper hall will also feature CAMRA book stall and merchandise plus the “every 1 is a winner” tombola along with the CAMRA membership sign up stand whilst down in the marquee you’ll find some classic old skool pub games to test your skill and luck on.

As usual there will be an array of third party food & drink traders at the festival:

• in the courtyard serving hot food will be Sunshine Pizza Oven, Yuleys Bratwurst, Yorkshire Crepes and Caribbean Fusion
• in the Stone Garden will be Bonnie & Clyde serving Italian comfort food
• in the upper hall will be Cheese Factor serving ploughman’s lunches, pork pies and cheese sandwiches whilst Fairfax Chocolatiers will be selling their fancy chocolates along with signature spirits which are available by the bottle to take home or to enjoy as a cheeky shot or part of a cocktail

A change this year is all our bars will be taking card payment (contactless or chip & PIN), however we’ll also still be selling the £5 bar tokens which you can buy using cash or card. There will be token sales desks in the marquee and upper hall.

As a result of the bars taking card payment, the entry price is no longer packaged in with beer tokens so the amount charged on the gate will be lower this year. As before all admissions are sold on the gate, however if you wish to attend one of the tours, talks and tasting events you can buy tickets for those in advance online.

WEDNESDAY 15 OCTOBER

The festival is open from 5pm to 10:30pm. However if you are a CAMRA member, sponsor, industry staff or journalist you can get in a little earlier for a preview session from 4pm which can be a great networking opportunity!

At 6pm we’ll be announcing the Champion Beer of Sheffield & District following an afternoon of judging the beers entered by local breweries. Additionally our very special guest, Jon McClure from Reverend & The Makers, will be opening the festival. The band has a new single out – Haircut – do buy a copy or download if that’s your thing!

We’ll also have Dan from the Brewery of St Mars of the Desert hosting a tapping of their German Stichfass, be prompt if you want to try some as when it’s gone it’s gone!

Entry to the festival on the Wednesday evening is free of charge for everyone other than a £3 deposit on a souvenir glass to drink out of.

the Millowners Arms pub will be open exclusively to festival visitors with a full range of beers, wines, spirits and soft drinks plus a food offering expected to include pies and various snacks.

THURSDAY 16 OCTOBER

The festival is open from 11:30am to 10:30pm. Entry is £2 for CAMRA members, £5 for everyone else, plus a £3 deposit for the souvenir glass to drink out of.

There’s a couple of optional extra events to add to your festival experience. You can go on a guided walk of the local area that featured in the book “Sheffield 1925: Gang Wars and Wembley Glory” with author John Stocks and local pub heritage expert Dave Pickersgill and the tour will finish at the beer festival. Tickets for this cost £12 and include entry to the festival with the tour starting at 11:30am.

We also have Bradfield Brewery hosting a tutored tasting at 7pm showcasing the depth and breadth of their beer range including an oak aged beer. Tickets for this cost £9 on top of festival entry covering the cost of the tasting samples (5 x third pints).

Finally on Thursday night at 8pm we have live music in the upper hall with The Retrobates, starring Kitty Noir, performing rythm & blues.

The steam powered River Don engine will be fired up for a demonstration run at 6:30pm.

FRIDAY 17 OCTOBER

The festival is open from 11:30am to 10:30pm. Entry is £3 for CAMRA members, £7 for everyone else, plus a £3 deposit for the souvenir glass to drink out of.

An optional extra event to add to your festival experience at 4:30pm is a pub heritage talk, concentrating on Sheffield’s Little Chicago Quarter. It will explore both the pub heritage aspects of the area plus the streets which feature in the book, ‘Sheffield 1925: Gang Wars and Wembley Glory.’ The cost is £4 on top of festival entry and includes a copy of the Little Chicago pub walk booklet.

At 8pm on Friday night we have Soul Battalion on stage in the upper hall performing the best of soul and motown.

The steam powered River Don engine will be fired up for a demonstration run at 1pm and 6pm.

SATURDAY 18 OCTOBER

The festival is open from 11am to 9pm. Entry is £3 for CAMRA members, £7 for everyone else, plus a £3 deposit for the souvenir glass to drink out of.

In the upper hall we have Loxley Silver Band playing at 2pm and Blyth Power (a long established folk rock band) on at 5pm. Throughout the afternoon the Kelham Island Rapper team will be dancing around the festival.

The steam powered River Don engine will be fired up for a demonstration run at 1pm and 4:30pm.

CHARITY

The good cause we are supporting this year is the Sheffield Childrens’ Hospital Charity with collection buckets placed around the festival. Please consider dropping a donation in and they will also accept unspent credit from beer tokens.

SOUVENIR GLASS

All your drinks will be served in your branded festival glass which you can keep as a souvenir or return for a refund at the end. There is a choice of half or pint glasses and all also have a third pint line. Our bars offer a choice of third, half and pint measures. The glasses are sponsored by Hendersons Relish and Bradfield Brewery. There are self service glass rinsing stations around the festival.

VOLUNTEERING

The festival is organised and staffed entirely by volunteers. If you’d like to help out please visit the website for more information and complete the online staffing form.

MORE INFORMATION

All the details, including the beer & cider lists, will be available on the website (sheffield.camra.org.uk/sc) once confirmed or alternatively printed programmes will be available to buy at the festival for £1.

Our chosen charity for SCBF49 is Sheffield Children’s Hospital Charity. The charity works together with the hospital, to ensure that children and young people can receive the very best care, in the best possible environment.

The money raised through donations buys life-saving equipment, funds vital research and treatment for thousands of children from across the world and helps us create a comfortable, engaging environments for our patients at Sheffield Children’s Hospital.

Please support this vital local charity: all donations, including glass deposits and unused beer tokens, are gratefully received. Our past charities have included Burton Street Foundation, Roundabout and Yorkshire Air Ambulance. Last year we raised £2700 for Weston Park Cancer Charity. It would be great if we could raise a similar figure this year.