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Beer of The Festival 2026

Our Beer Of The Festival has been selected following four panels of blind judging.

Led by fully qualified Beer Sommeliers or Certified Cicerones, each panel was made up of brewers, publicans, festival sponsors and the winners of our ballot of ticket holders.

We are pleased to confirm the results of Beer Of The Festival 2026 were:

Bronze: Big Trip – Together In Electric Dreams

Silver: Balance Brewing & Blending – Birthday Blend 2025

Gold: Tun Brewing Co – Quaternity

Finalists:

  • Runaway – ESB
  • Torrside – Quasar
  • Coleys – ESB

Be the first….

Be the first to taste a whole bunch of brand new beers that have been made specially for the festival – and in some cases made by the festival team.

Thanks to all the brewers, pubs and other contributors to our collaboration projects:

We’ve got beers….

All the orders are placed so we’re pleased to confirm the cask and keg beer line up for #CBCF26.

Our two cask beer bars are split alphabetically – you’ll find breweries beginning A to M on the Blackjack Beers Bar in the Youth Centre building (white building in the car park), while breweries beginning N to Z (actually N to W) are on the JP & Brimelow Bar in the Church lower hall.

The full list is now published here: Cask Bars

The Keg Bar, brought to you in association with Steelfish Brewing Co, is also in the Church lower hall. Although our list has 39 beers on it, limitations on space mean that the bar only has 15 taps which will rotate through the beers as lines become available. Some beers have multiple kegs so may be on, sell out but then return later in the festival.

The list of keg beers is here: The Steelfish Brewing Co Keg Bar

We try to keep availability on this page up to date but at busy times, beers can change quicker than we can keep up with.

The full lists for the Chorlton Fireworks Cider and Perry Bar and the The Vicar’s Gin Bar are also available now.