Once a chaotic, free for all in the city centre, Tramlines has since morphed into a huge outdoor, multi-stage festival showcasing some of the best talent in the world of music, arts and culture, whilst still keeping local acts at the forefront of the billing.
Sheffield’s Tramlines Festival has always been a celebration of music, arts, and culture in South Yorkshire. From its modest beginnings as a multi-venue, free-to-access event in 2009 to its current incarnation in Hillsborough Park, Tramlines has moved with the times and found an excellent balance between booking the biggest and best names around and continually committing to its local ethos. Tramlines has had to evolve to meet the growing demands of both the public and the promoters—the real turning point being the move to Hillsborough Park in 2018. This vast, spacious venue is ideal for a festival, enabling Tramlines to stage several different venues that showcase both global and local acts alike.
The lineup in 2025 is enriched with even more South Yorkshire flavour. Two of the three headliners are from the area—Pulp and The Reytons—with the former having curated Friday’s lineup themselves. Pulp have given the opening day of Tramlines a more alternative feel with acts such as Spiritualized, John Grant, and Baxter Dury on the bill. Saturday and Sunday include some of the most talked-about and critically acclaimed artists of the last year, including The Last Dinner Party, CMAT, and Heather Small. Live favourites Red Rum Club and Franz Ferdinand join local legend John Shuttleworth and the ever-present Everly Pregnant Brothers to form a superb, genre-spanning lineup across the weekend.
Tramlines has become one of the biggest city-based music festivals, playing to Sheffield’s strength as a city known for its prolific music scene. However, dealing with expansion—as well as maintaining what makes the festival so special to begin with—is not easy. As the festival has continued to grow, so has the Tramlines Fringe Festival, which now hosts a free music stage in the city. This initiative aims to align with the original spirit of the festival that was established during its inception in 2009, as pubs, clubs, and venues across Sheffield pull out all the stops to showcase the city’s thriving grassroots music scene.
Despite having had endless incredible experiences during its initial years, I believe people often look back on the early days of Tramlines Festival with rose-tinted glasses. There is no doubt that having a major festival for free in a major city centre has massive benefits for the community, especially in terms of accessibility, affordability, and preserving local culture and identity. However, in the early 2010s the festival could often feel like a standstill. Huge queues, overcrowding, and bottlenecks of people around Division Street were the norm, as you could catch huge names such as Echo and the Bunnymen, Public Enemy, and Wu-Tang Clan for the price of a burger and a pint in the modern age. In my opinion, the advantages of having global artists on your doorstep were outweighed by the disadvantages arising from there simply being too many people for the space in which the festival was held.
Since the move to Hillsborough Park in 2018, Tramlines has programmed almost 300 slots for Sheffield artists, raised over £260,900 for charity, and been awarded gold status by Attitude Is Everything for the festival’s commitment to accessibility. In 2024 alone, there were several partnerships with brilliant causes and organisations such as Sheffield Young Carers, Strut Safe, and the Hillsborough Tree Planting Project, as well as £5.45m generated for the local economy. There is an understandable element of nostalgia when looking back on Tramlines over the years as it has moved out of its city centre roots, but I believe the dedication the festival has shown to keep South Yorkshire at the heart of all its decision-making keeps the spirit of the original festival alive.
Tickets to Tramlines Festival are selling fast with Friday and Saturday SOLD OUT, so make sure you grab some before they all go!
