Martin Ellis
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Tue 20 Oct 2026 · 4 min read

EMF Camp 2026

#emf camp#hacking

Another EMF Camp done and dusted1. This was my fourth time at the festival, from my first visit in 2018, through the hot-glued LED neon strips in 2022, the beg button in 2024, and this year’s planetarium dome viewer for creating content for the on-site planetarium.

Tents in a dark field at night, with laser beams fanning up into the sky from the stage area and a rainbow LED pole flying a flag.

Our Village

This year we camped again as Test Village2 (yes, that was the name3). Our village even had a lovely sign, which we can thank Will4 for sorting out.

A white road-style sign reading Welcome to TEST VILLAGE on a pole beside a grey gazebo strung with festoon bulbs, with tents and a blue sky behind.

Welcome to Test Village

There was a big push for villages and installations to have collectable stamps this year, so I’m very grateful to Marianne5 for sorting ours out with something last minute.

Red rubber stamps of a rocket, a ringed planet, a cartoon figure and some stars on a clear block, next to a ring of clear letter stamps, in a mesh zip bag.

Our village stamps for the year

And of course, the beg button made its third appearance, standing by the road outside our village, this time with a Rust rewrite and a set of Walk/Stop lights.

The beg button in daylight: a yellow push-button unit with a screen, beside a black two-aspect Walk/Stop light, on a pole with a cross-shaped stand on dry grass between tents.

The beg button by day

Turns out we weren’t the only ones with the same idea this year either.

Another installation at night: two sets of traffic lights showing red on a pole, one in a weathered yellow housing, above a pedestrian push-button box with a glowing green display, with lasers in the sky behind.

We were not the only ones with traffic lights and beg buttons this year

The Ninja Slushie Machine

EMF landed right in the middle of the UK’s third heatwave of the year6, so the real hero of the weekend turned out to be the Ninja slushie machine we decided to buy a few days before leaving. It’ll happily slush almost anything you pour into it, given enough sugar, fat, or alcohol, which meant that over the weekend we ran juices, caffeinated soft drinks, and more than a few alcoholic mixes through it. Dragon Soop7 and Club-Mate were the standout combinations8 (but maybe not for good reason).

Three photos of a Ninja slushie machine on a table in a blue-lit tent: full of orange slush, then pink slush beside a bottle of Schweppes raspberry lemonade, then white slush behind two bottles of Club-Mate.

Working through orange juice, raspberry lemonade and Club-Mate

Null Sector

Null Sector is EMF’s club stage, and this year I got to watch a friend play their first-ever EMF set there, always a good excuse for a late night. The sound control was noticeably better than last time too. Previously you could feel the bass through the ground well into the night, but this year the tents stopped vibrating once we were back at camp. Bob9 was there as always, having a great time.

A room lit by UV tubes, its black walls covered floor to ceiling in neon tape graffiti (names, hearts, EMF, I LOVE TRAINS), with a bench along one side and a screen on a flight case at the end.

The UV-graffiti-covered corridor inside Null Sector

Pink laser beams fanning out through the smoke over a packed crowd, with a DETRIMENTAL banner on the stage.

Lasers cutting through the smoke over the crowd

Red laser beams over a crowd in silhouette, with VENJENT on the screen at the back of the stage.

The stage lasers in full swing

A mannequin in a bucket hat with one arm raised, hanging under the lighting rig in purple light.

Bob, raving as always

The Rest of the Camp

A few more bits and pieces spotted around the wider site, including the village noticeboard, complete with the traditional “please do not reboot the field” warning.

A wooden noticeboard in a field, covered in a map, posters and stickers under a sign reading Please do not reboot the field, above a close-up of its post with a sticker saying Please like and share this post.
Village Noticeboard
A large round black board standing in a field, covered in red, blue and orange bottle caps that make a pixel-art wizard in a tall hat, with two astronaut figures behind it.
The Wizard Dish
Three astronaut figures standing under a tree among tents at night, their helmet visors glowing as screens.
Astronauts at Night
A cluster of tall translucent columns of different heights on a wooden base, glowing pink and purple under a tent canopy at night.
Light Tower
A tall angular wooden structure lit blue at night, with a glowing space-agency style logo, a small spotlight and a door panel, in a field beside a gazebo.
Crashed Rocket

  1. This post has been sitting in my drafts since EMF Camp in July, so whilst the event was done and dusted, this post was not. ↩︎

  2. Not to be confused with our sister village, Astro Observability, who actually know what they’re doing (with telescopes at least). We just build things and hope they don’t catch fire. ↩︎

  3. In the first year our name caused us issues when our tables and chairs weren’t delivered, because someone thought the order was a test. ↩︎

  4. Thanks, Will, turns out proper signage is a seriously underrated village upgrade. ↩︎

  5. Turns out finding a stamp designer days before a festival is exactly the kind of task villages need a Marianne for. ↩︎

  6. I didn’t have a thermometer handy at Eastnor to confirm the exact number, but it certainly felt like it. ↩︎

  7. A neon-blue Scottish energy drink that’s essentially rocket fuel in a can. ↩︎

  8. The full slush menu, roughly 3.8 UK gallons of it, was orange juice, apple juice, raspberry lemonade, rum and coke, rum and Dr Pepper, Pimm’s, cider, Club-Mate, tropical Fanta, and cherry coke. ↩︎

  9. Bob has his own life on Instagram as cosmicbobadventures, turns out he gets about a bit more than just Null Sector. ↩︎

emf camphacking
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2026-10-20 00:00 +0000
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