Saoirse Returns for Third Gala Festival Set on Saturday
Saoirse is heading back to gala festival for her third appearance, and this weekend she gets a top spot on Saturday’s bill at Peckham Rye Park. Her set will be an A/V show, a format she says lets her build the performance much more intentionally than a standard DJ slot.
Peckham Rye Park and The Floor Is Ours
GALA is a three-dayer, and this year’s theme is The Floor Is Ours. Friday brings Giggs, Mala and Conducta, Saturday prioritises electronica from DJ Seinfeld and Call Super, and Sunday closes with Chaos In The CBD and Palms Trax. Saoirse said she loves that it still feels human in scale, even as it has grown massively.
“Even though it’s grown massively, it hasn’t lost that sense of intimacy and community that made people fall in love with it originally,” she said. That balance is the real draw for a festival that marks the official start of festival season for many people and has long been tied to London’s club culture.
Lasers, Light and Atmosphere
“The A/V show is a very different experience for me creatively, trying to add to the experience by adding something that’s visually stimulating,” Saoirse said. “The A/V show is designed much more intentionally from the ground up, musically and visually together.” She added that the set is “heavily centred around lasers, light and atmosphere.”
Her description points to a show built less around crowd-reactive DJing and more around fixed visual and musical design. She said, “With DJing, you’re reacting constantly to the crowd and the energy in the room in real time.”
Who Saoirse Wants to Catch
Saoirse also singled out CK, Kia, Priori and Tikiman as acts she is excited to see, calling the line-up “ridiculously good this year.” That is a useful signal for anyone planning the weekend: her own set sits inside a bill she clearly thinks is worth arriving early for, not just turning up to see one name and leaving.
Her broader point was about how spaces work, not just who is on the poster. “For me, inclusivity isn’t just about line-ups or optics, it’s about the entire infrastructure,” she said, naming security, accessibility, artist treatment and opportunities as part of the same equation. For a festival that prides itself on community, that is the standard the weekend will be measured against.
