Brick Lane Jazz Festival: East London gigs

Brick Lane Jazz Festival opens in East London on Thursday, April 23, with four days of gigs, talks and club nights around Brick Lane and Shoreditch. (bricklanejazzfestival.com) The live festival runs from Friday, April 24, to Sunday, April 26, and the new Brick Lane Conference starts a day earlier on Thursday at the Flow State Hub in Ely’s Yard. Festival passes start from £39 and Pro Passes for the conference start from £19. (bricklanejazzfestival.com; flolondon.co.uk) Organizers say the 2026 edition is the festival’s fifth and spans 12 East London stages, with a central hub at the Truman Brewery on Brick Lane. Venues listed across official and ticketing pages include Village Underground, Rich Mix, Rough Trade East, 93 Feet East, Juju’s Bar & Stage, Café 1001, Ninety One Living Room, Brick Lane Tap Room, Mad Cats and the Flow State Hub. (flolondon.co.uk; bricklanejazzfestival.com; checkout.timeout.com) The lineup stretches well past straight-ahead jazz into neo-soul, hip-hop, R&B, broken beat and electronic music, which is how the festival has positioned itself since launch. Official listings for 2026 include Joe Armon-Jones, Brian Jackson, anaiis & Grupo Cosmo, Steam Down, JGrrey, Lucinda Chua, Charlotte Dos Santos and Girls of the Internet. (bricklanejazzfestival.com; flolondon.co.uk) That mix reflects the way London’s jazz scene has worked in the 2020s: bands, DJs and singers moving between club music, soul and improvisation rather than staying inside one genre bill. The festival’s own background page says it was built to spotlight emerging talent across those overlapping scenes and to keep every venue within walking distance for gig-hopping. (bricklanejazzfestival.com) The biggest change this year is the conference programme, which adds panels, workshops, mentoring sessions, networking mixers and radio broadcasts alongside the shows. Sessions listed by organizers include talks on funding, online audiences, collaboration, migration and music in London, and the UK jazz scene’s relationship to the United States. (bricklanejazzfestival.com; bricklanejazzfestival.com) Speakers and partners announced for the conference include Soweto Kinch, Binker Golding, DJ Ritu, Women in Jazz, Solid State Logic and Teenage Engineering. The festival says the conference is scheduled around the live programme so passholders can attend both. (flolondon.co.uk; prescriptionmusicpruk.com; bricklanejazzfestival.com) Set times also show how late the weekend runs. Time Out’s ticket page lists Friday from 5 p.m. to 1:30 a.m., Saturday from 1 p.m. to 5 a.m., and Sunday from 2 p.m. to 9:30 p.m., pointing to a program built around both seated shows and after-hours sets. (checkout.timeout.com) The festival has grown quickly since its 2022 debut. Outside coverage and festival material describe a move from a smaller multi-venue launch to a 2026 edition spread across a dozen stages, with the Truman Brewery and nearby clubs acting as a compact circuit for audiences moving on foot between sets. (thefestivals.uk; bricklanejazzfestival.com) For anyone heading down this weekend, the practical detail is simple: the programme starts on Thursday, April 23, and the main run begins on Friday, April 24, with most venues clustered within a few minutes of Brick Lane. The result is less one-room festival, more neighborhood crawl with wristbands. (bricklanejazzfestival.com; bricklanejazzfestival.com)