DJ AG ANNOUNCES AG FEST 2026, HIS FIRST-EVER FESTIVAL
- Valentina Reynolds
- Jul 17
- 3 min read
Updated: Jul 26
A year ago this month, Morella wrote that DJ AG is the definition of community and we need to protect that. At the time, the festival was just a rumour. Now it has a date. Saturday 25 July, Copthall Playing Fields, Barnet. AG FEST is happening.
Before any of it he was Ashley Gordon. Tottenham, pirate radio on Axe FM in the early 2000s, then years in a sales job while the music sat on the shelf. It was his daughter who nudged him to start the journey. His early outdoor sets involved carrying a generator on his back through London until the day he got tired in Wood Green, set up where he stood, and noticed more people stopped when he stayed still. So he stayed still. In 2023 he left the job, and the streets became the venue.
Everything about his life has transformed since. The numbers are in the millions, the strangers walking past became crowds who turn up for him, and a stretch of pavement at King's Cross has hosted everyone from Skepta, JME, Ed Sheeran and Jessie J to Will Smith performing Summertime and Burna Boy sharing the stage. Time Out named him Londoner of the Year.
What hasn't moved an inch is the man in the middle of it all.
Think about how this industry usually greets people. An artist knocks on a door and gets measured before they've said a word. Wrong sound, wrong clothes, wrong day, and the door closes with that polite, off energy every musician learns to recognise. Whole careers end on doorsteps like that.
Now watch what happens when someone walks up to AG's setup. Doesn't matter who you are. An artist twenty years deep having fun with their catalogue, a new act with one song and shaking hands, a dancer, someone building a business. Everyone is met with exactly the same thing: love, sincerity, and his full attention.
No panic, no sizing up, no checking what you're worth first. Having known him for a few years now, I can confirm the man off camera is the same one on it. He gives people his time like it costs nothing, when it's the most expensive thing anyone has.
That, more than any viral clip, is why the community exists, and why artists who headline arenas kept choosing a street corner.
Now that welcome gets its own festival. AG FEST 2026, his first, runs midday to 10pm across two stages and five decades of music. JME, D Double E, Lady Leshurr, Devlin and Frisco carry the grime. Maxi Priest holds the lovers rock. Baby Cham and Alison Hinds bring dancehall and carnival, Donae'O, DJ Ironik and Kyla Reid run the garage, and Daniel Bedingfield and Kathy Sledge of Sister Sledge cover the pop and soul.
Though, it's the Discovery Stage, given entirely to unsigned artists AG has championed on his livestreams. For some of them, 25 July could be the day everything changes.
You never know who's in that crowd, who's watching the stream, whose ear catches the right thirty seconds. AG understands that better than most, because his own life turned on a moment nobody planned. The door the industry kept closing on people, he's holding open on the biggest platform he's ever had.
And the platform keeps growing outward, not just upward. Between the viral sets and the festival build, he's still turning up in care homes with music and light, and still raising money to take opportunities back to artists and young people in Jamaica.
"This isn't just a festival. This is a movement," he says. From most people that's a press line. From him it's a description of the last three years. Last year the message was protect what he's building. This year, London can do something better. Show up for it.