Festival Producer Opportunity

Festival Producer Tender

Historic Royal Palaces (HRP) is a registered charity, responsible for the care, conservation, and presentation of HM Tower of London (TOL), Hampton Court Palace (HCP), Kensington Palace State Apartments, (KP) the Banqueting House at Whitehall (BH), Kew Palace (KEW) and Hillsborough Castle and Gardens, (HCG) the official residence of HM The King in Northern Ireland and residence of the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland.

HRP is an independent charity, receiving no government funding and derives its income principally from admissions, retail, licensing, commercial events, sponsorship and support from donors and members.

HRP is a charity for everyone. We are committed to preserving and sharing the stories of our six magnificent palaces and making them accessible to all. Through partnerships, innovation, and storytelling, we strive to break down barriers, inspire curiosity and stir the spirit in people of all ages and backgrounds.

The Big Bahooey Festival

We are running a tender process with the intention of awarding a contract for the provision of a Festival Producer and are inviting suitably experienced / qualified organisations to tender.

Event Date(s): Late May Bank holiday – 2026, 2027, 2028 and possible extension for 2029.

Deadline for submissions: Friday 11th July 2025 at midday

HRP’s requirements

Please refer to the Specification of Requirements for full details.

‘The Big Bahooey’ will be staged at Hampton Court Palace during the late May Bank Holiday weekend. The event is a fun, family, arts-based festival, responding to the palace’s history as a pleasure palace and place for entertaining. The first Big Bahooey took place in May 2025 and we are looking to build on this success. We had a total of 21,000 visitors across three days and expect to increase this figure substantially going forward.

As a result HRP are looking for a festival producer that prides themselves on being able to create and deliver large scale shows and diverse programmes that will attract social families; including fun circle shows, larger than life roving acts, colourful parades, interactive stage shows and unique spectacles for well-respected and successful family festivals and events all over the world.

The festival will take place across the East Front gardens and will largely involve simple set ups with minimal infrastructure such as rope arenas, free-standing backdrops and basic staging all with flexible positioning. We would also like there to be a showstopper act that changes each year and is a complete surprise to the audience. There will be one main stage for headline performances.

Exclusion criteria

Please refer to the Procurement Specific Questionnaire for our conditions of participation and qualifying questions.

Responses to Invitation to Tender

All responses to the tender must be received by HRP by Friday 11 July 2025 at midday and must be submitted electronically via our E-tendering system – Delta.

Tender documents

The tender process will be available through HRP’s e-tendering system, Delta e-Sourcing.

Tender documents will be made available to all on Delta.

Documents will be issued on 10 June 2025.

Registering for Delta

Please note that in order to view the Invitation to Tender in Delta, you must register as a “supplier”. Registration can be completed using Supplier registration | Delta (delta-esourcing.com). Tenderers are urged to undertake this as soon as possible to avoid problems later. The Access Code for this tender box is H7WRPWZR9T.

For more information about this opportunity, please visit the Delta portal at: https://www.delta-esourcing.com/tenders/UK-Greater-London:-Event-services./H7WRPWZR9T

To respond to this opportunity, please visit this link: https://www.delta-esourcing.com/respond/H7WRPWZR9T

Should any Tenderer experience issues with registering or using the Delta service, please contact the Delta Helpdesk on 0800 923 9236 or email [email protected].

You must also register on the government’s Central Digital Platform: www.gov.uk/find-tender (you only need to do this once). Instructions can be found in the attached documentation.

Contract value: Estimated at £255,000 per annum

HRP reserves the right not to award a contract