Major festival at Sandringham Estate cancelled at '11th hour' due to poor ticket sales

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Major UK festival series featuring Janet Jackson cancelled at '11th hour' due to poor ticket salesHeritage Live said it was ‘devastated’ to cancel 11 days of concerts across three sites

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A major UK festival series due to host Janet Jackson, Christina Aguilera and The Streets has cancelled all three of its summer 2026 festivals due to poor ticket sales.

For 10 years, Heritage Live has been staging multi-day summer concert series at some of the UK’s most beautiful historic estates and country homes: the Sandringham Royal Estate, Englefield Estate and Audley End Estate.

This summer, Jackson and a UK festival exclusive Aguilera were booked to play at Sandringham alongside Eric Clapton, Lionel Richie, and Ricky Martin in his first UK concert in over a decade. Faithless, Scissor Sisters and The Streets were among the artists performing at the other locations.

But on Monday (13 July), Heritage Live shared a lengthy statement to Instagram – where they’d advertised the festivals less than a month ago – announcing that the concert series would not be going ahead. The earliest show was less than two weeks away, scheduled for 23 July.

Janet Jackson had been due to perform at the Sandringham Estate as part of Heritage Live’s summer concert seriesGetty

“We’re devastated to report the heartbreaking news that we have no choice but to cancel this summer’s Heritage Live festivals at the Englefield Estate, the Audley End Estate and the Sandringham Estate,” the post began.

Heritage Live explained that the company had been through an “extraordinarily tough year” and had been working “desperately hard behind the scenes” to find investment only for it to have “fallen through at the 11th hour, making it impossible to go ahead”.

The company said that a number of its shows had had “far lower than average ticket sales” due to the cost-of-living crisis, which combined with rising artist and supplier costs had made the event unsustainable.

The Sandringham Estate (pictured) was due to play host to a five-day festival with concerts from Janet Jackson, Lionel Richie, Christina Aguilera, Ricky Martin and Eric ClaptonGetty Images

“As one of the few remaining British independent promoters, it’s become almost impossible to compete in what has become an increasingly saturated festival market,” Heritage Live continued. ”It would therefore be irresponsible and wrong of us to proceed without the certainty that we’d be able to meet all of our supplier, artist and crew costs.”

The company wrote that it was “absolutely devastated” to call off the event and was “so very sorry to let everyone down”.

Ticketholders who purchased their tickets through “one of our reputable ticket agents” (listed as AXS Ticketing, Ticketmaster, See Tickets, Gigantic, Skiddle, or Ticketline) should be automatically refunded, although Heritage Live suggested people keep a hold of their transaction receipts and contact the agents directly if they have any queries.

Aguilera had been scheduled to play Heritage Live as a UK exclusiveAFP/Getty

Prior to Monday’s announcement, Heritage Live hadn’t posted on Instagram for nearly a month.

Numerous posts about the festivals had, however, been shared in the spring, including competitions and posts urging its followers to ”book tickets now before it’s too late”.

Other acts booked to play at the festival had included Richard Ashcroft, Ronnie Wood, Example, UB40, JME, Pete Tong, Sugababes and Olly Alexander.