All shine, no rain: RALLY has proved itself to be one of London's best day festivals

While you can never have too much of a good thing, the current saturation of London's day festival circuit means that to truly be heard above the noise, events need to showcase something really, truly special. Enter RALLY, which returned to Southwark Park for its third edition on August 23. With its late-season position and leftfield programming (previous bookings have included Actress, Space Afrika, Nourished By Time, Marie Davidson, and Erika de Casier), RALLY has managed to become one of the most tipped events in the capital's underground dance music calendar. Forgoing the urge to compete with the jam-packed line-ups of London's contesting day parties, this all-dayer offers attendees the opportunity to cleanse their festival-gorged palate and catch a range of cutting-edge live sets and extended, unique DJ sets as the season concludes.

Though its role as a "last hurrah" in the city festival calendar has been a blessing for many, it's also proved somewhat of a curse; the last two editions have been plagued by adverse weather, with storms hitting both its 2023 debut and 2024 follow-up. And while the show has continued, RALLY hasn't fully had the chance to demonstrate what it has to offer amidst the rainfall. "The truth is, it's been tough," organisers wrote on Instagram a week before this year's event. "No one could plan for that kind of back-to-back hit (odds of 1 in 1,500). But we won't lose optimism for this project".

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This year's line-up reflected that sentiment, with a typically varied offering of live sets from Floating Points, CASISDEAD, TAAHLIAH, Bassvictim, Moin, POiSON GiRL FRiEND and more – while Ben UFO, OK Williams, Mia Koden, Courtesy, Vlada, Man Power and Pender Street Steppers all stepped up behind the decks. As Saturday rolled around, and previous days of rainfall seemed to subside, there was an optimism in the air on the approach to Bermondsey - skies may not have been clear, and sunshine may not have been glittering along the surface of the nearby River Thames, but there was a palpable sense that RALLY would finally be given the chance to come into its own. 

With rain macs left at home and crowd members able to stand beneath the festival's maple and oak trees without running for shelter, the site came alive. RALLY shared its setting and structures with LGBTQIA+ day festival, Body Movements, which would take over the site the next day. Southwark Park in itself is a great location for this type of event, offering a mixture of wide-open spaces and enough wooded coverage so it still feels like a naughty day in the park. The festival can cater to a 10,000-strong crowd, though even its biggest arenas - Channel, Visionaire, and Agnes - still feel intimate, with scaffolding-esque structures folding in around attendees. Even at its smaller tent stages, Mill House and Skehans (named after the beloved South London Irish pub) never felt overwhelmingly busy; the queues at bars and toilets never seemed to take longer than around five minutes, though every glance at a stage still revealed a sea of dancers.

Across the site, various art installations from artists such as CEM A, Camden Arts Centre's Anna Howard, Disturbance, Trackie McLeod, and more brought the festival's artistic vision to life. Ranging from a tongue-in-cheek billboard that showed characters from The Wizard of Oz heading to Magaluf, to a temple-scratching suspended electronic guitar, RALLY's art programming felt like an Easter egg hunt. And while there were a fair few art-inclined heads milling around the festival's dancefloors, there were just as many groups of pals sinking shots, ecstatic at rounding off festival season.

To truly get to the heart of what this festival is about, you just need to look at the day's knock-out performances. Scottish multi-hyphenate TAAHLIAH's heavenrise live show - which featured a dithering blend of acoustics and blistering electronic - set an otherworldly tone at the Agnes Stage, followed shortly by the silky, moody sonics of legendary Japanese artist POiSON GiRL FRiEND. The Agnes Stage was the setting for much of the festival's biggest live performances, with UK rock-meets-techno trio Moin gathering an eye-watering crowd as they drilled through their trademark spine-tingling, gritty noise and hypnotic synths, not long before much-talked-about London duo Bassvictim took over with a rowdy set as the sky began to darken.

Rising dubstep star Mia Koden similarly drew a hefty crowd for her early doors set at Visionaire, while Copenhagen's Courtesy embarked on a mind-bending journey of trance and bass during her extended set in the afternoon. In an example of a set that truly felt like it could only happen at RALLY, a hundred or so attendees at the Mill House tent managed to witness 'Space music' specialist Takuya Nakamura perform drum 'n' bass with his signature trumpet, before Man Power stepped up to the decks to dish out some good old fashioned, hypnotic chug. As the evening crept in, crowds had a manifold of sets to choose from in the remaining hours depending on their mood — is it time for Ben UFO to provide a bassline soundtrack as the sun goes down over on Visionaire, or are you more inclined for some sweaty, misty house music from Pender Street Steppers — or both? Well, you could, as they were mere metres away from each other.

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As the darkness set in, the true Sophie's Choice of RALLY became apparent — where else would you have to choose between CASISDEAD's rowdy vocal display, Nosedrip b2b Orpheau the Wizard melting brains, or the verified spectacle that is Floating Points' live set? We chose to manoeuvre through all three, taking in the site as a myriad of sounds emit from the green, blue and red lit stages, silhouetting the winding branches of the hundred-or-so year-old trees at their edges.

While RALLY may not have been able to demonstrate what it really has to offer in previous editions, 2025 felt like a slam dunk — finally showcasing its unique knack for put cutting-edge art and music side-by-side, while still creating an environment that was vibrant, intimate and best of all, fun. If you didn't manage to make it to this year's RALLY, or want to relive some of the best moments, check out some of the best images from the festival's 2025 edition below, and to keep up-to-date with future events, click here.

Megan Townsend is Mixmag's Deputy Editor, follow her on Twitter