If your club has never been to one, "rugby festival" can sound like an afternoon of pool games in a muddy car park. A Revel festival is a whole weekend for a whole club: a proper fixture programme for the teams, a holiday park for the families, and a stage at the end with the music up. This is how it runs.
Friday: arrive, claim the lodge, find the pool
Teams arrive the day before the rugby starts, so nobody plays after a long drive. Lodges and caravans open at 4pm at most of our parks. Kit gets dumped, the pool gets found within about eleven minutes, and by dinner the park already sounds like one big club social.
The whole club stays in one place. Each family has picked its own accommodation when it booked (a caravan, a lodge, a hot-tub lodge, in some places a pitch for your own tent) so you are together as a club without being on top of each other.
Coaches usually use Friday evening to walk the pitches if they are on site, post the timetable and sort the morning meeting point.
Saturday: the group stage
Day one is a group stage, usually three matches per team. Fixtures are staggered across the age groups so squads spend less time waiting and more time playing: most sides play either the morning or the afternoon block, and the rest of the day is theirs.
What that looks like on the ground:
- Minis (Under 11 and below) play non-competitive festival rugby. No tables, no knockout. Squad sizes step up with the age group, four-a-side at Under 7 through to nine at Under 11, and daily playing time is capped, from 50 minutes at the youngest ages to 90 at the oldest, so the smallest players are not run into the ground.
- Juniors (Under 12 up) play competitive rugby: twelve-a-side at Under 12, thirteen at Under 13, fifteen from Under 14. Results from Saturday decide Sunday.
On-site first aid runs across the whole festival.
The afternoon, for the squads who played in the morning, is where the festival earns the name. At Devon that means Woolacombe beach and the surf. At Cheddar, caves and gorge walks. At Somerset and Cheshire, the pool, the arcade and the park. Coaches, we have noticed, are not immune.
Saturday night
Every park we use has evening entertainment on site: a showbar or clubhouse with family entertainment, a bar and restaurant, an arcade. This is the bit the parents talk about all year, and it is why the festival works as a family weekend rather than a rugby fixture with a hotel attached.
Sunday: cup day
Day two is built from Saturday's results, usually two matches. In the competitive age groups the top teams go into the Revel Cup, the middle group into the Revel Challenge Cup and the rest into the Revel Shield. Where an age group is bigger we add extra competitions. The point of the structure is that every team is still playing for something on Sunday, against opposition of a similar standard. A mid-table club side and an academy-fed side both leave with a final to talk about.
The minis play their second day of festival rugby, and every player gets called up.
The stage
After each final the teams come up on stage with the music on and their families roaring. Medals go to every player in the non-competitive age groups; in the competitive ones, to all finalists, with trophies for the winners of each final. It is loud, it takes a while, and nobody minds.
Sunday night and Monday
Most of our UK festival packages are three nights, so Sunday night is still yours: the park, the showbar, the last swim. Check-out is 10am on Monday at most parks. The minis go home with medals, the juniors with finals fought out, and everyone with a story they will still be telling at training in September.
What is included, and what is not
Every Revel-run UK festival package includes team entry, access to all your scheduled matches, accommodation as part of the package each family chooses, medals and trophies as above, on-site first aid, and a named Revel tour manager who walks the organiser through the booking.
Extras sit outside the package: coach travel, a stadium day (Old Trafford and Anfield from the Cheshire festivals), surf lessons, go-karts. Tell us what the squad is into and we price it in.
Questions we get every year
Can parents and younger siblings come?
Yes. That is the whole design. The pool, the arcade and the evening entertainment are there for the non-playing half of the family.
Do we have to stay on the park?
Accommodation is part of the package, and staying together is most of the point. Some festivals also offer hotel options (Cheshire, for instance, has hotels near Liverpool and Manchester). Ask us if the club has a specific need.
Which age groups are there?
Set per festival and listed on each festival page from the live entry data. Most run from Under 7. Girls-only categories run at Devon, Somerset and Cheshire; see the girls rugby page.
What if it rains?
It is British rugby in April and May. The games go on, the pool is heated, and the showbar is indoors.
Price it for your club
Tell us the festival you are looking at, your age groups and roughly how many are travelling. We come back within one working day with dates, availability and a per-person price — or use the instant quote to price a festival, park and party size right now.
Phone lines are open Monday to Friday, 9am–5pm, and WhatsApp is always on. Contact the team.