Kendal Whisky Festival is 4 and 5 December 2026, moving to Brewery Arts: three four-hour sessions, about 40 exhibitors, tickets £45 on the booking page.

The Kendal Whisky Festival 2026 is on Friday 4 and Saturday 5 December, and for the first time it is at Brewery Arts on Highgate, not Kendal Town Hall. There are three four-hour sessions, about 40 exhibitors and more than 200 whiskies, and tickets are on sale through TryBooking at £45 a session. Masterclasses have not been announced yet.

The quick answer

  • Dates: Friday 4 and Saturday 5 December 2026, in three sessions: Friday evening, Saturday afternoon and Saturday evening.
  • Venue: Brewery Arts, 122A Highgate, Kendal, LA9 4HE. After five years at the Town Hall, the festival has moved about 150 metres down the road.
  • Tickets: £45 a session on the festival’s TryBooking page, which also says “Please do not book more than one session time for Saturday 5th December.”
  • Over-18s only, with ID. No dogs except assistance dogs.

Sessions and times

The festival’s About page says it is “split into three sessions: Friday evening, Saturday afternoon and Saturday evening”, and that “each session runs for 4 hours”. The TryBooking listing (Kendal Whisky Festival 2026) gives the first and last of them:

  • Friday 4 December: 6pm to 10pm.
  • Saturday 5 December, afternoon: the time is not shown on the listing’s public page. We will add it when it is published.
  • Saturday 5 December, evening: 5pm to 9pm.

Online booking closes at 6pm on Saturday 5 December, according to the listing.

You can book only one Saturday session. The festival says: “Your ticket may be cancelled if you book more than one Saturday session.” There is no such limit on adding the Friday.

Tickets: £45, or £40?

The festival’s own About page still says each session “is charged at £40.00”. The TryBooking listing it links to as its ticket page prices every session at £45, and that is what you will pay when you book. TryBooking may add a booking fee at checkout.

A ticket gets you into one session, a festival glass and the official programme. “Once inside the venue you do not need to pay for anything else unless you use the shop,” the festival says. Exhibitors pour samples in 10ml measures, and there is a whisky shop on site for bottles of anything you liked.

Masterclasses are bookable separately and were listed as “to be announced soon” on 7 October 2026. The festival says they go on sale through the year and are announced first in its newsletter.

Who is exhibiting

The festival says it is growing this year “to around 40 exhibitors, including distilleries and independent bottlers”, showing “over 200 whiskies from around the globe”. Its exhibitors page is still headed “Exhibitors at Kendal Whisky Festival 2025”, so it shows last year’s line-up, not this year’s.

The festival was “born in 2021”, according to its co-founders Phil Walker and Dwayne Miller, and the TryBooking listing calls 2026 its sixth year. Kendal BID and Kendal Town Council are named as supporters, and Kendal BID lists it in its December calendar (Kendal BID).

The rules

From the festival’s FAQs:

  • Under-18s are not admitted, because of the venue licence and insurance. Bring proof of age.
  • No dogs, except assistance dogs.
  • No glasses, flasks or your own alcohol. You are given a festival glass on arrival, and samples cannot be decanted into bottles to take away.
  • You can leave and come back during your session as long as you keep your wristband on.
  • Access: step-free on the ground floor, with a passenger lift to the first.
  • Coats: there is a space to leave them, at your own risk.

The festival asks visitors to eat before and during the session; there is free drinking water and spittoons throughout.

Getting there and parking

Brewery Arts is on Highgate in the town centre, LA9 4HE. Kendal station is on the Lakes Line from Oxenholme, a few minutes’ walk from the town centre, and the bus station is on Blackhall Road, behind the Westmorland Shopping Centre.

For a Friday or Saturday evening, the train is the obvious choice. If you drive, check our parking in Kendal page for the town-centre car parks, and Kendal roadworks and travel for anything closing nearby. For late trains home in December, see our Kendal Christmas train and bus times.

The same weekend in Kendal

The festival shares the first weekend of December with Kendal BID’s Christmas Celebration in the Market Place, which Kendal BID lists for Sunday 6 December (see our Christmas lights switch-on page for why another listing says the 5th), and Christmas at Levens Hall opens on Friday 4 December (our Levens page). More fairs are on our Christmas markets near Kendal page.

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