GALA is back at Peckham Rye Park for three days this week, and the London festival is leaning hard into what it says has always made it matter: the dancefloor as a place for identity, community and collective euphoria. Under this year’s theme, The Floor Is Ours, Friday brings Giggs, Mala and Conducta, Saturday features DJ Seinfeld and Call Super, and Sunday closes with Chaos In The CBD and Palms Trax.
One of the event’s most closely watched returns comes from Saoirse, who is back at GALA for the third time and will play an A/V show on Saturday. The producer, trUst label founder and Body Movements festival co-director said the festival still feels human in scale, even as it has grown, and credited that intimacy with keeping it distinct in a city where festival culture can feel transactional. For her, that connection is part of why it remains one of her favourite summer dates.
GALA is more than a booking list in Peckham. It has built a reputation as a celebration of the capital’s club culture, and Saoirse’s presence fits that identity closely. She described the event as one that has not lost the sense of community that made people fall for it in the first place, saying events that still feel emotionally connected to the scene stand out even more now. Her own return also says something about where the festival sits in London’s dance calendar: familiar enough to feel personal, big enough to pull in a serious crowd.
The Saturday set will be different from a standard DJ slot. Saoirse said the A/V show is designed from the ground up, musically and visually together, and that it is centred around lasers, light and atmosphere. She said she has become obsessed with the emotional and physical power of laser technology, describing its precision, tension and beauty as a way to cut through darkness. The format also gives her a different creative challenge, since DJing is built on reading the room in real time, while an A/V show is shaped more intentionally before anyone arrives.
The lineup around her underlines how broad the weekend is. Saoirse said she is looking forward to seeing CK, Kia, Priori and Tikiman, and called this year’s bill ridiculously good. She pointed to Tikiman for “proper festival dub skanking,” while praising CK’s music and saying Kia and Priori have mind-bending sounds in store. The mix of names across Friday, Saturday and Sunday gives GALA the shape of a festival that is still trying to hold club culture together rather than simply package it.
That is the real test for GALA this weekend. The festival is growing, but Saoirse’s comments suggest its appeal still rests on something harder to manufacture than scale: a sense that the people on site are part of the same scene, not just paying to pass through it. If that balance holds across Peckham Rye Park, The Floor Is Ours will be more than a theme. It will be the reason the festival still feels like it belongs to the crowd in front of the stage.
