You might think you’re quite into mushrooms. Maybe you order the fancy ones at restaurants or you’ve been on a foraging walk, started getting in to mushroom adaptogens and even tried your hand at micro-dosing.
But All Things Fungi is back to show you that you’ve barely scratched the mycelial surface. Yep, the three-day festival is returning to Chiddinglye Estate in the Sussex countryside this September, bringing together mycologists, foragers, artists, growers, scientists and assorted fungi obsessives for a weekend devoted entirely to Kingdom Fungi.
And when they say all things fungi, they really do mean it. There are mushroom identification walks and cultivation sessions, microscopy and DNA sequencing, alongside talks and workshops exploring everything from soil health, composting and rewilding to art, architecture and mental wellbeing.
This year, they’ve got a new Community Mycology Area that lets you get properly hands-on: clone a species you’ve found on site, pour agar, prepare specimens for the microscope and work your way towards what the festival rather brilliantly calls ‘Myco goblin’ status.
Elsewhere, things get a wee bit stranger. Fungalphabet is staging Fungal Hide & Seek, with fungi escaping from the pages of illustrator William Brown’s books and hiding around the woods for visitors to track down. Artists Clare Parker and Sarah Lawrence’s Fungaia installation involves giant wearable mushroom, spore and lichen heads made from repurposed materials, while SYMCYTO will be demonstrating what happens when you make art in collaboration with slime mould – complete with timelapse footage of the single-celled stuff doing its thing.
There’s some serious fungi brainpower heading into the woods too. The sprawling 2026 line-up includes renowned mycologist Professor Lynne Boddy, Fungi Foundation founder Giuliana Furci, forager and naturalist Lucy Lapwing, Compost Club’s Michael Kennard, urban forager Seb Amys, Seed SistAs and plenty more, with talks, walks and workshops running across the weekend.
But it’s not all microscopes and mushroom taxonomy. Live bands and DJs are on until 11pm each night, after which the site becomes a dark-sky and quiet zone – so you can swap dancing in the woods for actually looking at the sky.
And, pleasingly, festival-goers have been doing some actual citizen science while they’re there. Across the previous three festivals, visitors recorded 1,392 observations comprising 605 different species of fungi, slime moulds, plants and other wildlife, all now plotted on the festival’s biodiversity map.
You can even make a weekend of it, with camping included in weekend tickets and campervan pitches, bell tents and glamping pods also available. Sunday is the festival’s designated family day, when under-18s can attend free with an adult; children can’t stay overnight.
So yes, it’s a mushroom festival. But it’s also part science fair, part woodland party, part art festival and part crash course in the enormous kingdom that’s just getting on with stuff beneath our feet.
You may never look at a mushroom the same way again.
Fri 18th – Sun 20th September, 2026; from £65.28
allthingsfungi.co.uk
