Creamfields 2026: the clash guide — planning Daresbury before the set times drop
Creamfields North turns Daresbury into the UK's biggest dance floor from 27–30 August 2026. The lineup is out — 247 sets across four days and 14 stages in our data — but the hourly timetable isn't published yet (Creamfields historically drops set times in the final days before gates, in the app). This guide is how to plan anyway, and it gets rewritten with real clash calls the moment the timetable lands.
FestWave is an independent tool — not affiliated with Creamfields. Lineup per the official day and stage announcements; always confirm times once the official timetable is live.
The shape of the weekend
Four days, but not four equal days. Thursday is a soft open — 23 sets, four stages, no arena headliner. Friday doubles it (61 sets, ten stages). Saturday is half the festival on its own: 90 sets — the deepest single day on the bill. Sunday (73 sets) is the send-off with the two biggest curveballs on the poster. Whatever the times say, Saturday is where your hard choices concentrate.
Thursday 27 August — arrive, don't peak
The opening card is built for settling in: Laidback Luke on the Steel Yard, Ferreck Dawn and Matt Sassari for the house heads on Cream, and a full trance room already running on Rong (Richard Durand, Tenishia, Maria Healy). With only four stages live, Thursday's clashes will be shallow — treat it as a warm-up lap and bank the sleep.
Friday 28 August — FISHER and Summit share a roof, Cox goes clubbing
Friday's card splits by personality:
- The Apex indoor main stage belongs to the tech-house entertainers: FISHER and John Summit on the same stage, same day — the timetable's first real question is simply which order and who closes.
- Carl Cox headlines the Halo stage — three decades of authority in the club tent while the arena bounces.
- Disclosure (live) and Chris Stussy give the Arc a very different temperature, and I Hate Models leads a genuinely hard Steel Yard (AZYR b2b, Holy Priest, Teletech takeover names).
- Nation stacks the fast lane: Ben Nicky, Darren Styles, Maddix, Lilly Palmer, Space 92 — hard dance to hard techno in one room. Trance proper lives on Pepsi MAX all weekend, opening Friday with Paul Oakenfold and Giuseppe Ottaviani.
The likely heartbreak: Cox's club set landing inside the FISHER/Summit arena window. If it does, Friday becomes the weekend's first generational referendum.
Saturday 29 August — the 90-set day
Saturday reads like two festivals booked onto one field:
- The arena run: Martin Garrix, Armin van Buuren, Alesso, Dimitri Vegas and MK all on Apex — five arena headliners on one stage means the closing two slots will bury someone huge.
- Calvin Harris headlines the Arc — which sets up the weekend's marquee clash-in-waiting: Garrix vs Calvin, indoor vs open air, almost certainly in the same late window.
- The Steel Yard is the connoisseur's answer to both: Underworld live, Amelie Lens, CamelPhat, Dom Dolla, Joseph Capriati b2b SOSA, KETTAMA, Pete Tong. Underworld live against the Garrix/Calvin window would be the single hardest call of the weekend.
- Sub_Aural is a full drum & bass festival for one day: Andy C, Hedex, Hybrid Minds, Sigma, Culture Shock, Koven — fifteen sets deep.
- Teletech goes feral: VTSS, X CLUB., Partiboi69, Kruelty. And Pepsi MAX runs peak trance (Billy Gillies, Bryan Kearney, Mauro Picotto).
If you only buy one day ticket, this is the day — and the one where a taste-sorted shortlist stops being a luxury.
Sunday 30 August — Swedish House Mafia vs Tiësto, and Fatboy gets a stage
The closing day pairs the poster's two biggest single bookings and dares you to choose: Swedish House Mafia on Apex and Tiësto on the Steel Yard — with Faithless (live) on the Tiësto stage as the wildcard for anyone who was raving in 1998 or wishes they had been. Around them:
- Fatboy Slim gets his own stage — "Fatboy Slim Loves" — a curated room with the man himself headlining.
- The Arc leans pop-house: Becky Hill, Sonny Fodera, Armand Van Helden.
- Gorgon City and Prospa hold Halo, Ferry Corsten and Aly & Fila close the trance room — which also turns hard for the finale (Coone, Sickmode, Andy Whitby).
- Angerfist headlines Teletech — 200 BPM as a Sunday-night statement.
SHM vs Tiësto vs Faithless live in one evening window would be the kind of three-way that ruins group chats. Sunday will hurt; plan it first.
Get ready now, decide fast later
The play while times are missing: work out which of the 247 sets actually match your taste now, so when the timetable drops you're sorting a shortlist, not a poster.
That's what FestWave does: export your Spotify liked songs (two minutes, no login), upload the file, and the whole Creamfields lineup is colour-coded — green for artists already in your library, amber for acts that match your sound. When the timetable lands, the same grid becomes an hour-by-hour schedule with your matches highlighted, and the Garrix-or-Underworld question answers itself in one glance. Your library is read entirely in your browser and never uploaded.
Want to try it first? Every past festival on FestWave is free — build a grid for one and see how it works before the bank holiday.