Exmoor Dark Skies Festival marks 10th anniversary with 80 events

The Exmoor Dark Skies Festival will mark its 10th anniversary when it runs from 16 October to 1 November 2026, with about 80 events across and around Exmoor National Park. The annual event celebrates the night sky with walks, talks and shows, plus moonlit swimming, astronomy sessions, bioluminescence walks and planetarium shows.

A Dark Sky Reserve

The festival highlights Exmoor's status as a Dark Sky Reserve, a designation granted by the International Astronomical Union in 2011. The status is intended to safeguard the right of any citizen to enjoy the night sky by helping to limit light pollution.

Festival organiser Julie Colman said the event brings together "lots and lots of events across the two-week period", celebrating "the skies, the wildlife, the wellbeing elements of it". She said there is "very little light pollution on Exmoor", which allows the dark to be "really dark" with none of the pollution impacting it.

In the core of the reserve, Colman said, there is a large area with no light at all. That makes the sky much clearer, she added, allowing people to see "incredible constellations" and the Milky Way. Photographs taken during previous dark skies events show clear views of the stars, and locations such as Wimbleball Lake are described as big draws.

Local business boost

The National Park said it designed the event in 2017 partly to help local businesses towards the end of the traditional tourism season.

In Dunster, on the edge of Exmoor, Yarn Market Hotel manager Antony Brunt said the festival has become much more widely known in recent years. "Now we literally have people ringing us up to book," he said. The hotel hosts special trips led by a local astronomer and visits to various sites and events across the park.

Brunt said the festival brings in people from all over the UK, arriving at a quieter time of year. Some guests return regularly, he added: "For people to come regularly twice a year to the same hotel, they must be enjoying the stargazing part of the weekend."

The growing popularity of the festival meant that many events sold out before the opening day.

Source: BBC Science.