‍

There is something strangely counter-cultural about a thousand Catholics pitching tents in the West Sussex countryside to spend five days praying together. In an age when faith is so often practised alone, a private conviction, a solitary Sunday obligation, CELEBRATE Festival invites us to remember that the Church was never meant to be a solo endeavour.

From 15 to 19 August 2026, the grounds of Worth School will become home to one of the most joyful gatherings in the English Catholic calendar. Families, young people, parents, grandparents, bishops, priests, deacons, and religious will arrive from across the country for five days rooted in worship, formation, fellowship, and the kind of laughter that only happens when the Body of Christ relaxes into itself.

CELEBRATE is not a conference. It is not a retreat in the traditional sense. It is something harder to categorise and, perhaps because of that, more powerful: a temporary Catholic village, built in the summer in the shadow of Worth Abbey's Benedictine setting, where the rhythms of daily life are reordered around the Mass, Adoration, and the Holy Spirit.

Bishop David Evans of the Archdiocese of Birmingham, one of CELEBRATE’s most enthusiastic advocates, describes the CELEBRATE ministry as a place where "the living and felt experience of the Holy Spirit sustains families and draws them deeper into the life of the Church’’. That is no small thing in a moment when family faith life faces extraordinary pressures, when children are pulled in a hundred directions, when parents feel ill-equipped to pass on what they themselves were never fully given.

CELEBRATE responds to that anxiety not with lectures, but with encounter. The children's and youth programmes do not merely babysit young Catholics while adults attend talks; they form them. Children come home talking about their faith. Teenagers find friends who share their convictions. Parents find, often to their own surprise, that their faith is renewed alongside their children's.

The festival's setting plays no small part in this. Worth School sits in an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, and Worth Abbey's ancient community of Benedictine monks provides both a physical and spiritual backdrop that no conference centre could replicate. There is something about praying Vespers in a place that has echoed with prayer for generations that strips away the noise of ordinary life and leaves something cleaner behind.

CELEBRATE Trust has worked hard to ensure the festival is genuinely accessible, family tickets are heavily discounted, a pay-by-instalments option means the cost can be spread over months, and confidential bursaries exist for those who need them. Priests and religious attend at reduced rates. The message is simple: everyone is welcome. This August, if you are wondering where to find the Church at its most alive, most generous, most joyful — the answer may well be a field in Sussex. We hope to see you there.

‍

Tickets and full information at W: www.celebratefestival.org places are limited and the festival regularly sells out.

‍

Source: CELEBRATE