All five Maidstone displays were booked for 6 to 8 November 2026, and those dates have passed. No organiser has published a 2027 date yet; we will add them.

Updated 9 November: the 2026 displays are over. All five were booked for Friday 6 to Sunday 8 November, and those dates have now passed. We have not confirmed how each night went, so this page does not say. Leeds Castle’s fireworks page lists no 2027 date yet, and none of the other four organisers has published one. The details below are kept as a record of what was on sale, and as a guide to what to expect next autumn: see When the 2027 dates arrive.

Five fireworks displays ran inside Maidstone borough this autumn, and none of them was on Bonfire Night itself. Guy Fawkes Night fell on Thursday 5 November 2026, and every display on sale in the borough was on the weekend that followed: Kent Life on the Friday and Saturday, Bearsted on the Friday, Cornwallis Academy and Maidstone Grammar School on the Saturday, and Leeds Castle on the Saturday and Sunday.

Updated 5 November: Bearsted’s display on Friday 6 November has sold out. WeGotTickets shows no adult or under-16 tickets left and offers a waiting list, the parish council says the event is sold out, and there are no tickets on the door. It has still not named the roads closing around the field. Cornwallis Academy’s prices have risen again, to £21 adult and £11 concession. Leeds Castle’s Sunday, Kent Life and Maidstone Grammar School still have tickets, and their prices are unchanged. National Highways has also booked motorway closures that affect the way home on Saturday and Sunday: see Getting there and parking below.

Updated 29 October: Leeds Castle’s Saturday 7 November display has sold out; its own booking page shows every Saturday ticket out of stock. Sunday 8 November is still on sale at £29 adult and £20 child. Kent Life, Bearsted, Cornwallis Academy and Maidstone Grammar School were unchanged that day.

Updated 22 October: a fifth display is on sale. Bearsted Parish Council’s Fireworks Extravaganza is on Friday 6 November at the Elizabeth Harvie Field, fireworks at 7.30pm, £10 adult and £2 under 16 plus a booking fee. Last year’s sold out. The other four were unchanged that day.

Updated 20 October: Cornwallis Academy’s prices have risen again, to £18.50 adult and £10.25 concession. Kent Life, Leeds Castle and Maidstone Grammar School were unchanged that day.

That matters because the Saturday, 7 November, is booked four times over. Four venues fire on the same night, in four different parts of the borough. Below is what each one has actually published, checked against the organiser’s own pages and ticket systems on 5 November.

The five displays at a glance

Display Dates Fireworks Adult Child
Kent Life, Sandling Fri 6 and Sat 7 Nov 8.30pm Fri, 6.30pm Sat £18 £15 (2 to 15)
Bearsted, Elizabeth Harvie Field Fri 6 Nov (sold out) 7.30pm £10 £2 (under 16)
Cornwallis Academy, Linton Sat 7 Nov 6.00pm £21 £11 concession
Maidstone Grammar School Sat 7 Nov 6.00pm £12 £8 (over 5)
Leeds Castle Sun 8 Nov (Sat sold out) 5.30pm £29 £20 (3 to 15)

Kent Life, Sandling: the cheapest way to get two goes at it

Kent Life at Lock Lane, Sandling, ME14 3AU is the only one of the five running on two consecutive nights with different timings, which makes it the flexible option if the Saturday does not suit.

The farm park’s own event page gives the schedule as gates 4pm, last admission 7.30pm and fireworks at 8.30pm on the Friday, and gates 3pm, last admission 5.30pm and fireworks at 6.30pm on the Saturday. The Friday display is the latest of any display in the borough this year, which is worth knowing if you are bringing small children.

Tickets are £18 adult, £15 child aged 2 to 15, £60 for a family of two adults and two children, with under-twos free. Glow sticks are sold separately from £6. Kent Life members get 15% off by entering the membership card number in the promotional box when booking online, and the discount is like-for-like, so one adult membership buys one discounted adult ticket. Cards are checked on the gate.

Two practical warnings come from Kent Life itself rather than from us. The first is parking: the site says plainly that it “cannot guarantee onsite car parking for all ticket holders” and advises arriving early, with overflow parking at Cobtree Park and a 15-minute walk from there. The second is getting out again, where a traffic management company has been appointed and there “may be a compulsory diversion in place”. Pets are not allowed, and the children’s fairground rides are cash only even though the bar and food stalls are not.

One more thing that trips people up every year: Kent Life is closed for normal daytime visiting on both 6 and 7 November. If you were planning a farm-park day and fireworks in the evening, that is not on offer.

Cornwallis Academy, Linton: the gate shuts at 5.50pm

The Cornwallis Fireworks Spectacular at Cornwallis Academy, Hubbards Lane, Linton, ME17 4HX is the one most easily missed. Maidstone’s own tourism site, Visit Maidstone, lists Kent Life and Leeds Castle on its fireworks page and does not carry Cornwallis at all.

It runs on Saturday 7 November, with gates from 2pm and the display at 6pm, according to the organiser’s ticket page. The detail that catches people out is the cut-off: gates close at 5.50pm and there is no admittance after that. Bars and music finish at 7.15pm and the site closes at 8pm.

Live prices on the event’s official ticket agent, Ticket Tailor, were £21 adult, £11 concession and free for under-fours on 5 November, with car parking a £5 add-on and an all-rides wristband £15. Prices have climbed in bands since September: £11 and £7 when we first checked, £16 and £8.50 on 1 October, then £18.50 and £10.25 on 20 October. A concession here means anyone under 18 or aged 65 and over, and an adult means 18 to 64 inclusive. The organiser does not say whether another rise is due before the night.

The organiser’s own site gives two finish times: its booking page says 7.30pm and its event information says 8pm, and it tells visitors to check their ticket.

Parking is the thing to sort in advance. The organiser states that parking tickets are “ONLY available for purchase in advance due to subject to availability” and only through Ticket Tailor as an add-on to an entry ticket. Disabled bays sit just outside the school building on a first come, first served basis, and registered disabled ticket holders can apply for a free Essential Companion ticket after buying a general admission ticket.

Everything sold on site is card only, with the organiser saying “no cash will be accepted” at food, drink and merchandise outlets, which is the exact opposite of Kent Life’s cash-only rides. The display itself is designed and fired by Wizzard Fireworks, and the event is run by FST Group Kent Ltd, a company limited by guarantee registered at the school’s address.

Bearsted: the village display, now sold out

Bearsted Parish Council runs its Fireworks Extravaganza on Friday 6 November 2026 at the Elizabeth Harvie Field, behind Holy Cross Church off Cross Keys, ME14 4HR. Its WeGotTickets page gives gates at 6pm, last entry at 7pm and the fireworks at 7.30pm, set this year to the music from the Netflix film K-Pop Demon Hunters, with hot food and drink stalls on the field.

It has sold out. On 5 November the WeGotTickets page showed no tickets left at £10 for adults aged 16 and over and £2 for under-16s, plus a booking fee of £1 and 20p, and offered a waiting list. The parish council says the same. It is ticket only: the council says there are no tickets on the door, and under-16s must be with an adult. The 2025 display sold out too.

There is no parking. The council asks people to walk in, by the entrance at Willson Avenue near Holy Cross Church or via Cross Keys, and warns of road closures on the day, with “further details to follow”, and had published no more by 5 November. It asks visitors to allow 15 minutes for the queue, and bans personal fireworks, sparklers, glass and unaccompanied under-16s.

Maidstone Grammar School: back this year, and the cheapest adult ticket left

Maidstone Grammar School’s Annual Fireworks Spectacular, run by the school’s parents’ association, is back for 2026; in early September its box office still showed nothing newer than the November 2024 event. Its Ticket Tailor page lists it for Saturday 7 November, 4pm to 9pm, at the school on Barton Road, ME15 7BT.

The association describes it as “bigger and better” with “an earlier start time”: gates at 4pm, live music from the Joe Cox Band and others, a food court and fairground rides, then a 25 to 30 minute display set to music from 6pm.

Tickets are £12 adult, £8 for a student or child over five, and £25 for a family of two adults and up to three children, which makes the family ticket the best value of any display in the borough. An unlimited-rides wristband is £15 per child. The page does not say what under-fives pay, so check before you book. The association says free parking is provided at Mote Park Leisure Centre, a short walk across Mote Park from the school.

Leeds Castle: the big one, and the earliest start

Leeds Castle at Broomfield, ME17 1PL calls its Fireworks Spectacular “the largest and most spectacular fireworks display in South East England”, and runs it on Saturday 7 and Sunday 8 November 2026. The Saturday is sold out: on 5 November the castle’s booking page listed every 7 November ticket as out of stock, while the Sunday was still on sale, with the castle’s events page saying “limited tickets remaining”. This year’s soundtrack theme is songs about time, fired to music with projections and lasers on the castle itself.

The castle’s own booking page sets out the shape of the day: arrive at 2pm to use the grounds, maze, play areas and adventure golf, a falconry display at 3pm, and the fireworks at 5.30pm. That is the earliest display of the five and the only one that gets small children home at a sensible hour.

Prices are £29 for adults aged 16 and over and £20 for children aged 3 to 15, unchanged on 5 November, with under-threes free but still needing a ticket. There is a separate, much dearer VIP package that includes a behind-the-scenes tour of the firing site and afternoon tea in the Salon, with the caveat that all guests must vacate the castle from 4.30pm until the show is over.

When the 2027 dates arrive

Guy Fawkes Night falls on a Friday in 2027, 5 November. On this year’s pattern, the displays are likely to cluster on Friday 5 and Saturday 6 November 2027, but no organiser has said so yet. Every one of this year’s five sold through an advance booking system, and two sold out before the night:

  • Bearsted: sold out on WeGotTickets the day before, with no tickets on the door
  • Leeds Castle, Saturday: sold out more than a week ahead

So when the 2027 dates go on sale, book early for those two. We will add each date here as the organiser publishes it.

What was not happening

There was no fireworks display in Mote Park this year. Maidstone Borough Council publishes a list of every large event booked into the park, and its 2026 list runs to ten events, ending with the Kent Downs 50 Challenge on 10 October and the Maidstone Half Marathon on 18 October. Nothing in November appears on it.

The Grammar School display, which this page listed as off in early September, is now on sale for 7 November (see above).

Getting there and parking

Kent Life and Leeds Castle both sit off the M20, at junction 6 and junction 8 respectively, and both will be busy on the same Saturday evening. Cornwallis Academy is south of the town on Hubbards Lane, reached through Loose and Linton on the B2163 and A229, with no rail option.

If you are parking in the town centre instead and travelling out, our Maidstone parking page has the current tariffs and the free periods, and the roadworks and travel page carries the current week’s motorway and A-road closures. Bearsted Parish Council warns of road closures around the Elizabeth Harvie Field on 6 November but has not yet said which roads. Neither Kent County Council nor National Highways has published a road closure for any of the five displays. Since Wednesday 28 October the town-centre gyratory has also been closing in sections between 9pm and 5am for resurfacing, which matters on the way home from the later displays.

National Highways’ closure report, updated on 4 November, books these motorway closures for the fireworks weekend, all from 8pm to 6am: the M2 westbound entry and exit slips at Junction 5 (A249, Stockbury) on Friday 6 November; the M20 eastbound entry slip at Junction 5 (Aylesford) on Saturday 7 November; and the M2 eastbound between Junctions 5 and 6 on both Saturday 7 and Sunday 8 November (National Highways).

Sources

All details checked on 5 November 2026. Times and prices can change, so confirm with the organiser before you travel.