Cardiff Music Strategy 2025: Overview

Friday, 3 October 2025 – Jude Rogers

Author, writer, journalist, broadcaster and creative consultant. 

For this Welsh music-lover, it’s been exciting to see Cardiff having such a magical, musical summer. We’ve had Stevie Wonder and Alanis Morissette in Blackweir Fields, Fontaines DC and Idles in Cardiff Castle, Lana Del Rey and Kendrick Lemar at the Principality, and Oasis choosing our capital for their first gig in sixteen years. Liam Gallagher explained why in his unique way on X: because it’s the “bollox”.

Academy Music Group are also repairing and reopening the much-missed St David’s Hall, opening up the venue to a pipeline of bands who might not have made it over the Severn Bridge before, and spades have broken ground for Cardiff’s new 16,500-capacity indoor arena. The energy present in so many creative corners of Cardiff continues to pulse, from Cultvr Lab to Canopi to Fuel to Paradise Garden, which comes together in this year’s Cardiff Music City Festival, a two-week event that  showcases the depth and diversity of music being created in our capital and beyond, beginning this Friday.

The idea for the Cardiff Music City Festival originated in 2019, following the publication of the Cardiff Music Strategy report, which embraced the concept of regenerating and developing the city around music. Cardiff Council knew it made sense to join up brilliantly curated events like Wales’ leading music discovery weekend, Sŵn, the Wales Millennium Centre’s week-long festival celebrating storytelling and the singing voice, Llais, the Welsh Music Prize (now in its fifteenth year, and being shown on BBC Wales for the first time) and international classical competitions like Cardiff Singer Of The World (hosting a gala concert of past winners in 2025, accompanied by the BBC National Orchestra of Wales).

Vital too was the need to give focus and financial support to Cardiff’s wider live music infrastructure, and make smaller venues feel a crucial part of this celebration of the city. Despite challenges including Covid-19, the after-effects of austerity, and the cost-of-living crisis, seventeen small venues were given Cardiff Music City investment funding last year, including Tudor Street’s Canopi, City Road’s Paradise Garden, Porters, the New Moon and the Royal Arcade’s The Queer Emporium.  Some of the income generated from this summer’s Blackweir Fields concerts is also being reinvested in grassroots venues and local talent, alongside parkland and green spaces.

“Cardiff Music City Festival really embraces the city as a whole,” says BBC TV presenter and 6 Music DJ Huw Stephens, who co-founded Sŵn in 2007 and the Welsh Music Prize in 2011, and broadcasts to the UK from Cardiff’s BBC Wales Cymru HQ. “There’s always something interesting going on in Cardiff. It’s such a spirited, independence-driven city with great underground promoters, Radar Magazine, and a community where everyone knows and supports one another. We know there is absolutely strength in power when everyone comes together.”

Last year’s festival theme explored artists pushing the boundaries of innovation. This year’s theme is even more urgent: to show how music can break down boundaries of division in a loud, chaotic world. Its opening weekend includes the inaugural Black Welsh Music Awards ceremony, being held at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama on 4 October. Cardiff Council also financially supports organisations like Tân Cerdd, which promotes Black music and culture in Wales, empowering local artists and advocating for diversity, and runs the monthly Neo Soul Jam in Canton’s Chapter Arts Centre.

“Cardiff Music City Festival is so amazingly supportive of Black artists,” says Tan Cerdd’s artistic founder, Dionne Bennett, a busy performer and teacher herself. “The organisers know how important it is to embed and platform Black Welsh culture into the festival, and therefore into our culture ecosystem.” This isn’t just about opportunities for performing or infrastructure either, Bennett says. “It’s about the community these events bring, and the social cohesion – that’s what music brings to people, and can bring to a city.”

This energy makes Cardiff an exciting place to make music today, says bilingual singer-songwriter Lily Beau, who began making music at 12, supported by Cardiff youth organisation, Sound Progression. She returned to Cardiff after working for Sony Records in London. “Cardiff’s music scene genuinely feels more diverse than it’s ever been, and Black Welsh culture feels more tangible than ever. We now have heroes and peers to look up to like Lemfreck and Aleighcia Scott [the former winning, and the latter being nominated for last year’s Welsh Music Prize]. It now feels it’s possible, at last, to be a thriving music-maker here.”

This year’s Llais week also features a diverse, thrilling lineup of voices. Internationally renowned innovative artists, such as Meredith Monk, Beverly Glenn-Copeland, and Rufus Wainwright play shows at the Wales Millennium Centre alongside homegrown, inventive talents like Cate Le Bon, Adwaith and Mared. The Welsh Music Prize ceremony will be held on the Monday of Llais week, and filmed for BBC Wales in the gorgeous setting of the Donald Gordon Theatre, with tickets on sale to the public. Cardiff-born, globally-renowned bassist Pino Palladino will be present to receive his Welsh Inspiration Prize, as his regular collaborator, Miley Cyrus, recently announced to a viral reaction online, and the Triskel Award given to three emerging Welsh acts, SOURCE, Nancy Williams and Morn.  To this judge, who has now been on the Welsh Music Prize panel seven times, last year’s event felt like an ambitious and thrilling step up. It was also better produced, and its range of nominees much more diverse and inventive, than when I’d been a judge in the past of the Mercury Music Prize.

Sŵn features even more prolific Welsh artists, including Gruff Rhys, Georgia Ruth and The Gentle Good, alongside rising acts like Adult DVD, Getdown Services and Moonchild Sanelly. “It’s really good for Sŵn to be part of a two-week celebration of all kinds of music at a time when old students are returning, and new students are arriving, when we can really focus on what the city has to offer,” says Sŵn and Clwb Ifor Bach founder, Guto Brychan.

Cardiff Music City Festival also supported Sŵn in launching Sŵn Connect last year, a two-day music industry conference offering networking opportunities for artists and professionals. This year’s two-day event, running on 16 and 17 October, sold out quickly, Brychan says. “There’s an industry focus in Cardiff now, which feels really positive for the future.”

Cardiff Music City Festival also loves to promote music as a transformative force – and as early as possible in its residents’ lives. Over the last two years, the Little Gigs project has delivered multiple mini-schools of rock across Cardiff, supporting kids in forming bands and performing at grassroots venues, providing expert mentoring support, and even helping them design their own merchandise. On 15 October at The Gate, Little Gigs Legends will showcase six bands from this project – yet another way in which the festival is inspiring future generations.

The sense that Cardiff has a long-term commitment to music as an agent of harmony and as a catalyst for change is  inspirational – especially in our challenging times. This ambition, being rooted in homegrown creativity and curiosity, also sends out a powerful message. “After a summer of big artists, it’s really exciting for people to have an autumn of intimate discovery,” Huw Stephens says, “and see what else Cardiff has for us, which is so much.”