Barclays/Barclaycard suspend sponsorship of major UK festivals, including Latitude, following boycott by artists

Following a major artist-led boycott, Barclays/Barclaycard is no longer sponsoring several well-known UK festivals, including Latitude, Download and the Isle of Wight Festival.

Speak with The guard, A Barclays spokesman said the bank had been “asked and agreed to suspend its participation” in the 2024 festivals.

The UK-based Palestine Solidarity Campaign called on people to boycott the bank, claiming that the bank is “funding Israel’s genocide against the Palestinians through its financial links to arms companies that sell weapons to Israel.”

According to the PSC’s latest investigation, Barclays now invests “over £2 billion in companies that supply weapons to Israel and provides £6.1 billion worth of financial services to those companies.”

In response, the group “Bands Boycott Barclays” was formed, consisting of musicians and music industry professionals, to “show solidarity with Palestine by boycotting all music festivals associated with Barclays.”

Last month, the Great Escape Festival in Brighton was boycotted by many artists due to its association with Barclays. Over a third of the acts on the festival’s line-up pulled out. Several acts have also pulled out of this weekend’s Download Festival in Leicestershire.

The latest focus of the boycott campaign is on Latitude, which returns to Henham Park in Suffolk from July 25-28. Numerous Irish acts, including CMAT, Pillow Queens and THUMPER, announced they were pulling out of the festival, while Lankum said this week that she and other acts on the bill had “signed a letter calling on the festival to drop the bench”.

Earlier this week, the words “Barclaycard presents” were prominently displayed on the websites of both Latitude and the Isle of Wight Festival. Barclaycard was also listed as the festival’s “main sponsor” on both homepages. However, today all references to Barclaycard have been removed.

Bands Boycott Barclays called the news “a historic victory for the Palestinian-led global BDS movement.”

“Musicians have destroyed Barclays’ dual strategy of funding genocide in Palestine while promoting their brand and ‘customer benefits’ at UK music festivals,” the group wrote on Instagram this afternoon. “This is the power of solidarity, collective action and a committed global commitment to do everything we can for Palestinian liberation.”