All CAMRA beer festivals are staffed by unpaid volunteers who give up their time – often using holidays from work – to help with setting up, running and clearing away afterwards. During the five days that we are open around 350 people come along to help us with the many tasks that are needed to get the beer (or cider, wine, gin or rum) into your glass. Without the volunteers, the festival simply wouldn’t happen.

This year we're on site:
Set-Up: 17th - 24th
Festival: 25th - 29th
Take Down: 30th - 2nd

Managing staffing numbers

Whilst we rely on many volunteers over the course of the festival, mostly we need them for our busiest days of Thursday, Friday and Saturday. So if you are only available for a one or two days, please consider those ones.

We also require volunteers before the festival opens to do tasks such as erect the fencing, the stillages and the bars, through to less strenuous jobs such as setting out chairs and putting up posters; there’s so many “little things” without which the festival wouldn’t be what it is.

And once the last glass has been cleaned, there’s still so much to do to clean everything down and pack it away for next year, and that’s the week when we need all the volunteers we can get!

What you can expect from us

Making sure our volunteers are well looked after is of paramount importance to the organisers and the first thing you’ll get from us is respect.

All volunteers will receive a festival glass and we’re hoping this year to give all volunteers a festival t-shirt, as well as a discount on festival clothing.

We don’t provide an accommodation subsidy at Peterborough, but we do have a large camping area with shower facilities that is free for our volunteers to use while they’re working with us.
Priority for the spaces will be given to those coming from out of town, and working more days. But we’ve not had to refuse anyone a camping space for a long time now since we enlarged the area set aside. However, we do ask that tents are kept as small as reasonably possibly, and we cannot guarantee a camping space unless pre-booked.

At Peterborough we have an on-site canteen that provides subsidised lunch and dinner as well as tea, coffee and soft drinks available at all times free of charge.

There's more staff information in the handbook. And if your application to work with us is successful you will be emailed the latest version of the Staff Guidebook and the Health and Safety leaflet shortly before the festival starts.

We also have the national CAMRA Volunteers Handbook that you can download here: CAMRA Volunteer Handbook 2026

Our promise about the information you provide us

The Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA) takes your privacy very seriously. Peterborough and District CAMRA branch are collecting your data so that we can contact you about the Peterborough Beer Festival. We will only contact you in relation to this specific event. We will treat your data as outlined in our privacy policy.

Please visit www.camra.org.uk/privacypolicy for further information. We will keep your information for a maximum of 15 months and only use it to contact you in relation to the festival. We will process your data in accordance with the 2018 General Data Protection Regulations.

If you have any concerns regarding data protection please contact us at ku.gro.armac@noitcetorpatad

Want to work with us?

Please fill out the Volunteer Sign Up Form