Parklife Festival Shuts Down Stage to Prevent Crowd Surge

Parklife Festival shut down its Matinee Stage “as a result of crowd movement,” according to a statement.

Parklife Festival didn’t entirely go as planned over the weekend. The Manchester gathering’s organizers halted the programming on its Matinee Stage on Sunday, June 15, getting ahead of potential incidents caused by a crowd surge.

Attendees learned of the decision via the Parklife Festival app. “Upon advice of the PL safety team, the show on the Matinee stage has been paused,” reads a notification sent out on Sunday. “We will update asap.”

This meant that scheduled performances by Chris Stussy and local artist Josh Baker were called off, and new time slots couldn’t be added for them at any of the festival’s other seven stages. “Unfortunately, it has been impossible to relocate Josh Baker’s and Chris Stussy’s performances to a new stage,” Parklife shared in a statement. “Our teams worked quickly and diligently to address the situation and the safety of our festival attendees is always our utmost priority.”

The festival’s organizers chalked the move up to “crowd movement at the Matinee Stage,” explaining that they followed “the advice of our safety team to remove the risk of any potential incidents.” Parklife, which drew some 80,000 revelers in 2025, also billed headliners like Mau P, Peggy Gou, salute, Bou, and Charli XCX.

Crowd surges at festivals have caused fatalities in the past. Perhaps most notably, a stampede at the 2010 edition of Love Parade in Duisburg, Germany killed 21 and injured over 600, signaling the demise of the longrunning event brand.

Stussy posted in an Instagram Story that he was “really gutted” not to perform after flying “straight from Barcelona to play a 3 hours closing set,” but that “safety comes first and we will make this right very soon.”

Baker, meanwhile, said “I deeply apologise” in his own Instagram Story. “I can’t really put into words what today was going to mean to me,” he wrote.