Bloc Reunion 2027: Lineup, Date and the Full Story

Bloc, the cult British electronic music festival that ended in 2016, is coming back for a single 16-hour party at The Cause in London on Saturday, March 6, 2027. Jeff Mills headlines, joined by British Murder Boys, Leftfield, Egyptian Lover and Miss Djax, with more names to be announced. It is a one-off reunion marking 20 years since the first Bloc weekender and ten years since the last.

The announcement landed on October 6, 2026, via Resident Advisor and The Quietus. To understand why it matters, it helps to know what Bloc actually was: a holiday-camp festival that booked Autechre, Aphex Twin and Basic Channel, nearly collapsed at a London site in 2012, and ended on its own terms four years later, followed by a public row.

Bloc 2027: what we know so far

The reunion is billed as "Bloc 20 Year Reunion." It takes place at The Cause, a venue at 60 Dock Road in London's Docklands, and runs from 2pm to 6am according to Dance Wax, spread across several rooms. Tickets are listed through Resident Advisor. Capacity has not been stated, and the organisers have not published prices in the coverage we reviewed.

The reunion was teased months earlier. In March 2026, co-founder George Hull told RA: "We'll say now that we're going to have a party this time next year."

The lineup announced so far

• Jeff Mills, who, according to Dance Wax, has played more Bloc headline sets than any other artist.
• British Murder Boys, the live reunion of Surgeon and Regis.
• Leftfield, making their first Bloc appearance, with Neil Barnes on a DJ set.
• Egyptian Lover, billed for a rare live set.
• Miss Djax, playing a vinyl-only acid set.
• Back-to-back and paired sets from DJ Storm and Tasha, Tama Sumo and Lakuti, and Steve Davis, the six-time world snooker champion, with Kavus Torabi.
• Room takeovers from I Love Acid, Plex and Chapter 10, plus a chill-out space run by Telepathic Fish.

How Bloc began: two 22-year-olds and a Norfolk holiday camp

Bloc Weekend started in 2007, organised by Alex Benson and George Hull, then both 22. According to a Fader profile of the founders, they grew up in Norfolk, helped run free parties in the countryside as teenagers and, at 18, booked Squarepusher and Radioactive Man for an event in Thetford Forest. After running club nights at university and parties in Brighton, they took over a Pontin's holiday camp in Hemsby, the Norfolk seaside town where they grew up. Autechre headlined the first festival, and it sold out.

The idea was simple and slightly absurd: put some of the most uncompromising electronic music around inside the least likely venue, a British holiday camp. The carpets of those camps gave Boiler Room's 2017 documentary its name, Dancing on Carpets.

The Minehead years, 2009 to 2011

After two years at Pontin's, Bloc moved in 2009 to the much larger Butlin's resort in Minehead, Somerset, raising capacity from 2,200 to 6,400, according to Wikipedia's festival table. The bookings read like a map of two decades of underground electronic music: Aphex Twin, Lee "Scratch" Perry and Afrika Bambaataa in 2009, Autechre, Salt-N-Pepa and Flying Lotus in 2010, then Aphex Twin again with Moderat and Four Tet in 2011.

What made it distinctive was context. Where most dance festivals build a site in a field, Bloc used an existing holiday resort. Benson told The Fader the team had run "three very successful festivals" at Butlin's when they were offered something far bigger.

2012: the London Pleasure Gardens disaster

In 2012, Bloc scaled up. The festival moved to London Pleasure Gardens in London's Docklands, a temporary site run by the team behind Glastonbury's Shangri-La area, timed for the Olympic summer. The announced bill included Snoop Dogg, MF Doom, Steve Reich and Flying Lotus, and Wikipedia also lists Orbital and Richie Hawtin.

According to The Fader's account, which draws on the founders' own telling, the problems began weeks earlier. The site had contamination and asbestos and had to be capped with aggregate at great expense. About two weeks before opening, with more than 10,000 tickets sold, a planned second stage for over 3,000 people was not ready and a tent replaced it. An admissions failure then caused bottlenecks of three to four hours on the Friday night.

Organisers cancelled the festival on July 6 and evacuated the site stage by stage over about two hours, moving around 15,000 people, with no one harmed. Reports differ on timing: Rolling Stone said the main stage shut around 9pm, while the founders' account has the event called off around 1am. The Metropolitan Police said the decision was the organisers' and attributed the problem to rain-driven pinch points, and the second day was cancelled. Tickets had cost £100. Hull's own summary of the night, quoted by The Fader: "It was just a really shit night out, rather than anything worse."

Administration, insurance and no apology

The financial fallout was severe. Administrators were brought in, and Bloc's only remaining asset was a cancellation insurance policy. According to the Fader piece, that policy excluded claims where the company admitted culpability, so a public apology could have jeopardised the money needed to repay ticket holders and creditors. The founders say they wanted to apologise but could not until the insurance issue was resolved. They lost their personal savings. In April 2026, Hull and Benson spoke publicly about the weekend in detail for the first time, in two episodes of the All Gone Wrong podcast, as RA reported.

Rebuilding in Hackney Wick

A friend offered the pair the lease on a warehouse in Hackney Wick, east London. They paid for the conversion on a credit card, soundproofed the building themselves and, once the administrators allowed Bloc to trade again, issued a public apology and held the first party on New Year's Eve 2012. The building also housed around 30 music and workplace studios, according to The Fader.

The festival stayed dormant in 2013 and 2014 and returned to Minehead in 2015, with names including Jon Hopkins, Jeff Mills and Autechre. In February 2016 the founders announced that the next edition would be the last, saying they wanted to concentrate on their London venues and record label. Benson called the festival "an absolute, banging great liability."

The final weekender and the hipster row

The farewell ran from March 11 to 13, 2016, at Butlin's. The bill included Thom Yorke, Four Tet, Holly Herndon, Jeff Mills, Floating Points, Carl Craig, Ben Klock, Nina Kraviz, Omar-S and Goldie, a line-up that shows how far Bloc's booking had stretched since its Autechre-headlined first year.

The ending was overshadowed days later. On March 18, Hull wrote a column in The Spectator saying he had quit promoting raves because the crowd had become "too safe and boring," and criticising safe-space policies. The reaction was fierce, and Bloc publicly distanced itself from the column, saying it was a collective and that one member's article did not speak for it. The BBC covered the dispute under the headline "Bloc festival organisers row over 'dull hipsters'."

In the years after, the Hackney Wick club and its associated spaces carried on until, according to RA, the club closed in 2020 so the team could focus on the studios and workspaces it rented to artists including Barry Can't Swim and Adamski. The founders have since started a separate business, Bloc Spaces, selling customised shipping containers as studios and micro-homes.

Why Bloc still matters

Bloc's legacy is arguably a proof of concept: an underground British festival that grew from 2,200 to 6,400 capacity on bills of Autechre, Aphex Twin and Basic Channel rather than big-room headliners. It also left a case study in how fast scaling can break an independent event, a lesson that echoes through today's festival economy, covered in our piece on Europe's disappearing dance festivals in 2026, and in the wider pressure on small venues we tracked in our European club closures tracker and our look at UK nightclub closures.

The reunion lineup tells its own story. Jeff Mills, whom RTS.FM profiles in full, is the thread between Bloc's industrial-techno taste and its fondness for acid and electro, and was on the bill for the 2016 farewell. We also covered how Nina Kraviz and Jeff Mills shared a bill at Fabric. Putting him at the top of a one-night reunion arguably says where Bloc sees its centre of gravity.

Bloc reunion 2027 timeline

Frequently Asked Questions

When and where is the Bloc reunion in 2027?

The Bloc 20 Year Reunion takes place on Saturday, March 6, 2027, at The Cause, 60 Dock Road, London E16. The party is reported to run from 2pm to 6am across several rooms.

Who is playing the Bloc reunion?

Jeff Mills headlines. The announced line-up also includes British Murder Boys (Surgeon and Regis, live), Leftfield, Egyptian Lover, Miss Djax, DJ Storm and Tasha, Tama Sumo and Lakuti, and Steve Davis with Kavus Torabi. Takeovers come from I Love Acid, Plex and Chapter 10, with a chill-out room from Telepathic Fish. More acts are expected.

How do I get tickets for Bloc 2027?

Tickets are listed through Resident Advisor's event page for the Bloc 20 Year Reunion. The coverage reviewed did not publish prices or capacity, so check the listing for current availability.

Who founded Bloc?

Bloc was founded by Alex Benson and George Hull, who started the first Bloc Weekend in 2007 when they were both 22.

What happened at Bloc 2012?

The 2012 edition at London Pleasure Gardens was cancelled and evacuated during its first night over crowd safety concerns after admissions bottlenecks and unfinished site infrastructure. Around 15,000 people were moved from the site with no one harmed, according to the founders' account, and Bloc went into administration.

Why did Bloc end in 2016?

The founders announced in February 2016 that the March edition would be the last, saying they wanted to focus on their London venues and record label. Benson called the festival "an absolute, banging great liability."

Where was Bloc held?

Bloc ran at Pontin's in Hemsby, Norfolk in 2007 and 2008, at Butlin's Minehead from 2009 to 2011 and again in 2015 and 2016, and at London Pleasure Gardens in 2012.

Is there a documentary about Bloc?

Yes. Boiler Room released Dancing on Carpets, a documentary on the festival's history, in 2017.