How We Check Dates

A wrong date sends someone to an empty square. So the rule on this site is short: no date appears here unless we have read it on an official page for this year.

What Counts as an Official Page

• the organiser's own website;
• the venue's website, where a house, castle, cathedral or garden hosts the market;
• the council's website, where the council runs or licenses it;
• the official tourism board for the town or region.

Newspapers, listings sites, hotel blogs and other guides do not count, however confident they sound. They are where last year's dates live on.

What We Record

For each of the 359 markets in the guide: the first and last day, the opening times for each day of the week, any days it is shut within its run, where the stalls are, whether you need a ticket, and who runs it. Beside those sit the address of the page we read and the date we read it. Both are shown on the market's page under "Checked Against the Source".

When a page gives a weekday with a date ("Thursday 26 November"), we check the two agree for this year. A mismatch is the commonest sign that a page is still showing last year.

When the Dates Are Not Out

Some organisers publish in the spring; others wait until October or November. If the official page does not yet show 2026, the market is listed as dates not yet announced. We show last year's dates beneath, labelled as last year's, because the time of year rarely moves by much. We never roll them forward and present them as this year's.

Right now 295 of the 359 markets have confirmed 2026 dates.

How Often We Check

• once when a market is added;
• again for every market in the first week of November, when most opening times are final;
• whenever a reader or an organiser tells us something has changed;
• unannounced markets are checked weekly through October and November.

What We Cannot Promise

Organisers close early for high winds, extend for a good year and change hours for a lights switch-on. We cannot see those changes as they happen. On the day you travel, look at the official page, which is linked from every market here.

Rankings

Where a page ranks markets ("most popular"), the order comes from the number of UK searches for each market's name over a year. Nobody can pay to be listed or to move up. See the affiliate disclosure for how the site is funded.

Corrections

If you run a market, or have just been to one, and something here is wrong, please tell us. Corrections are made the same day.