Does Size Matter? Which is our biggest vegan event?

A question we get asked many times is ‘which of your events is the biggest’? We have been organising the UK’s biggest vegan events for some years now, since our first show back in 2003 in Bristol. Since then, we have gone on to produce shows in Bristol, Brighton, London and Glasgow, as well as our first Trade show in 2017, and in our time we’ve seen crowds of up to 25,000 visiting (VegfestUK Bristol 2012) – but which of our events is currently the biggest?

For VISITORS coming to the events, the main interest is – how many stalls, how many talks, how many features, and how big is the venue – as well as how many seats available, how many caterers to choose from, how much entertainment is there?.

This table compares our 3 events, in Brighton, Bristol and London. The first table looks at our 2017 events, and the 2nd table looks at our projected 2018 events:

VegfestUK event	Number of stalls	Number of speakers	Number of features	Exhibition space
Brighton 2017	around 200	75	12	8,000 sqm
Bristol 2017	around 200	60	8	6,000 sqm
London 2017	around 285	120	18	10,200 sqm

Expected figures for 2018 are

VegfestUK event	Number of stalls	Number of speakers	Number of features	Exhibition space
Brighton 2018	around 230	70	12	8,000 sqm
Bristol 2018	around 230	60	12	10,000 sqm
London 2018	around 320	150	22	13,500 sqm

With these figures in mind, London is our biggest event, Bristol is the 2nd biggest, and Brighton the 3rd biggest. There are some other important considerations too of course – how many seats available, how many caterers to choose from, how much entertainment is there? With this in mind, this table compares further our 3 events for 2018:

VegfestUK event in 2018	Number of caterers	Number of bars	Number of seats (not in talks rooms)	Number of comedians	Number of musicians	Kids Area	Mature Zone
Brighton	19	2	200	20	10	Yes	Yes
Bristol	21	6	3,000	16	25	Yes	No
London	26	2	800	18	12	Yes	Yes

For STALLHOLDERS exhibiting at the event, the main interest is – how many visitors? And how many people working at the event (including other stallholders)? Here are the figures for 2017 and the projected figures for 2018:

VegfestUK event	Number of visitors in 2017	Expected footfall in 2018
Brighton	9,400	11,000 (with approx 800 working)
Bristol	11,000	12,000 (with approx 800 working)
London	14,000	16,000 (with approx 1,200 working)

Does size matter?

We fully recognise that not everybody likes to either exhibit or attend a big vegan event, and we value immensely the many regional events in the UK, some of which are pretty sizeable, and some of which are compact and bijoux. Many visitors find a smaller event easier to get around with a better visitors experience, and we fully support all the vegan events in the UK. We highly recommend that visitors seek out vegan events in their local area and support them all. Please see our website www.vegfest.co.uk which is regularly updated with vegan events of all sizes.