About the Festival

The Festival is a not-for-profit organisation dedicated to supporting and promoting the local community and businesses within it. We work year-round to give Suffolk producers and businesses a platform to showcase what they do, and get recognition and awareness from chefs, restaurants and business people all over the country.

Each year we have to fundraise to cover the costs of the Festival and to keep it alive for the future. We are very grateful to our sponsors, supporters, friends and visitors who all play a part in making it possible.

Your entry fees, for example, enable us to fund next year’s festival and get more exposure for our local food ecosystem.

Any donations help to make the next year bigger and better. If you would like to donate to the festival, big or small, please get in touch.

Festival Aims

The Aldeburgh Food and Drink Festival first took place at Snape Maltings in 2006 to celebrate and publicise the abundance, variety and quality of food and drink in Suffolk. The organisers of the not-for-profit event also sought to reconnect people with the food provided by the landscape as a whole: the villages and market towns, the fields, woodlands and marshes, the rivers and the sea. The festival has grown in size, success and importance but its philosophy remains the same.

  • To celebrate and champion Suffolk’s food and drink community and ecosystem
  • To promote Suffolk as a great food and drink destination
  • To provide fun and engaging activities for people of all ages that educate how to grow, cook and eat healthy food
  • To introduce emerging and established producers to new customers and markets
  • To encourage discussion and debate on issues relating to food and nutrition
  • To support Suffolk charities in their food and educational objectives

Future of Food

Five short films

The Festival has always been a showcase for the positive initiatives going on in Suffolk, and the wider world. Due to the uncertainties created by a global pandemic, meaning conferences and full festivals were fraught with difficulty, the Festival commissioned five short films which both explain the problem and reveal some of the emerging solutions and new opportunities within the food industry.

Whilst the films show material drawn from other continents, the festival directors hope that they inform and inspire our farmers, food producers and the wider public to see a bright but changing future for our industry and Suffolk.


The organisers of the not-for-profit event also sought to reconnect people with the food provided by the landscape as a whole: the villages and market towns, the fields, woodlands and marshes, the rivers and the sea.

The festival has grown in size, success and importance but its philosophy remains the same.

Farming for the Soil

Farming for the Soil

Robot Farming

Insects. The New Livestock

Protein of the future

The biggest problem of all is how we manage the need to feed millions more humans every year in a way that doesn’t draw excessively on our planet’s reserves. Farming and food production are the largest source of climate-changing emissions. Our insatiable demand for more and more food is now the most significant cause of the Earth’s biodiversity loss.
William Kendall, Festival Director