{"id":304405,"date":"2026-02-18T15:01:09","date_gmt":"2026-02-18T15:01:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/304405\/"},"modified":"2026-02-18T15:01:09","modified_gmt":"2026-02-18T15:01:09","slug":"iron-maiden-turn-only-2026-uk-show-into-its-own-festival-including-acts-featuring-bands-former-members","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/304405\/","title":{"rendered":"Iron Maiden turn only 2026 UK show into its own festival, including acts featuring band\u2019s former members"},"content":{"rendered":"

Iron Maiden<\/a> have turned their upcoming concert at Stevenage\u2019s Knebworth House<\/a> into a two-day festival.<\/p>\n

The British heavy metal titans announced on Tuesday (February 17) that their scheduled gig on Saturday, July 11 will have a warm-up day the day before. It will feature what they call \u2018Maiden World\u2019, which includes a stage with live bands who have connections to Maiden, as well as a funfair, a museum celebrating their 50th anniversary and an expanded bar.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The weekend, which is being promoted as \u2018Eddfest\u2019 after famous mascot Eddie The Head, will crescendo with Maiden\u2019s performance on the main stage. They\u2019ll play material from their first nine studio albums, as they\u2019ve done on the rest of their Run For Your Lives tour<\/a>, which kicked off last year. Support will come from The Darkness, The Hu, Airbourne and The Almighty.<\/p>\n

Manager Rod Smallwood comments: \u201cAfter the monumental shows in the UK last year, we knew that if we were going to play the UK in 2026 it had to be very different. So we chose Knebworth Park as it gives us the space required \u2013 which is just not available in stadiums \u2013 to put together something groundbreaking for our fans by creating a Maiden World for them. We are excited to now reveal the details of this one-off event to celebrate the band\u2019s 50 year career, which we are now calling Eddfest, because, as everyone knows, Eddie is the true star of the show!\u201d<\/p>\n

He adds: \u201cWe also know Maiden fans are basically a huge gang and we want to give them a weekend to remember at Knebworth. For the last couple of tours we have been arranging the Eddie Dive Bars for our fans, both pre- and post-show. Some of these took over the entire centres of towns with thousands of fans gathered there enjoying the fun, the music and each other\u2019s company. So Eddfest is going to expand on that concept in a huge variety of ways, to create a truly unmissable Maiden World over the whole weekend!<\/p>\n

\u201cThere will be a whole host of great music, great beer (of course!), lots of exciting and varied fun things to do, great souvenirs and merch, some unique and fantastic photo opportunities to create unbeatable Maiden memories, and of course, the true camaraderie that comes from being a Maiden fan.\u201d<\/p>\n

The bands playing on the Saturday will be Stray, Maiden United, Airforce, Tony Moore\u2019s Awake, Hair Metal Glamageddom and one more act still to be announced. Maiden covered Stray\u2019s 1970 single All In Your Mind in 1990, Maiden United are an acoustic Maiden cover band, Airforce feature former Maiden drummer Doug Sampson, and Tony Moore was briefly Maiden\u2019s keyboardist in the late 70s.<\/p>\n

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Maiden kicked off their Run For Your Lives tour with a European run last summer, and the shows will pick back up again with another European leg starting in May. The Knebworth date will be the last European date on the trek, and the band say it will be their last UK show until \u201cat least 2028\u201d.<\/p>\n

After the Knebworth gig, Maiden will bring the Run For Your Lives show to North, Central and South America. Go to their website<\/a> to see all of their planned concerts.<\/p>\n

As well as touring, Maiden are working on a documentary about their five decades as a band<\/a>. Universal Pictures Content Group is producing the film, which will be released in theatres later this year.<\/p>\n

\n

\"Eddfest\n<\/p>\n

(Image credit: Iron Maiden)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Iron Maiden have turned their upcoming concert at Stevenage\u2019s Knebworth House into a two-day festival. The British heavy…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":304406,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[93,61,60,278],"class_list":{"0":"post-304405","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-ie","10":"tag-ireland","11":"tag-music"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/304405","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=304405"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/304405\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/304406"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=304405"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=304405"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=304405"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}