The latest issue is live
Flip through all 11 pages below, or download the PDF.
The GigXchange Index · Issue 06 · September 2026
UK live music rates — September 2026
What gigs actually pay across the UK this month — by city, gig type and band size.
GX Index — September 2026
Other issues
Free report — 11 pages, CC BY 4.0
Last updated: 6 October 2026
Page 1 of 11
Cite this report
GigXchange (2026). GigXchange Index — September 2026. Issue 06. Available at: gigxchange.app/rates/reports/september-2026. Licensed under CC BY 4.0.
What UK live music actually pays in 2026
A free, monthly benchmark built from 4,772 real data points across 13 UK cities — for bands pricing gigs, venues setting budgets, agents benchmarking rate cards, and couples sanity-checking wedding quotes.
Audience
Who reads this issue
Performers deciding what to quote for a function. Venues and promoters building an entertainment budget that will actually be accepted. Agents sense-checking a rate card. Couples and event planners weighing a quote. Reporters and researchers who need a UK live-music figure they can footnote.
Coverage
What September covers
Seven gig types - wedding, private party, corporate, festival, ticketed club, theatre/pit and pub & bar - across thirteen UK cities and four band sizes, at 412 published cells. Every cell prints four percentiles, never a single average.
Methodology
What changed this month
Nothing in the pipeline - and after two months of model work that is the finding, not an omission. No source ceiling has moved since 8 August, the city blanket layer is unchanged, and the September figures are the August model run on a deeper pool. One correction is in print: evidence carrying no location is 54 in every 100 observations, where August said roughly six in ten. Full detail in the methodology.
This month's key figures
The headline numbers from the September 2026 issue — wedding, corporate, pub and city-level medians drawn from 4,772 weighted observations.
Wedding band fees, UK national
A 3-4 piece wedding band still takes £990 in September 2026 - identical to August, on 1,605 weighted samples rather than 1,588. The middle half of bookings land between £717 and £1,370, with the premium tier at £1,880.
£990
3-4 piece median
The pub fee that held
A 3-4 piece pub gig pays £350, and this is the first pub figure in the series to be properly tested: the cell went from 187 weighted samples to 274 and the median did not move a pound. The premium end did, £700 to £750. The pub duo went the other way - £375 to £325, on a sample that grew from 45 to 66.
£350
Pubs - lowest cell
Thirteen cities, fourteen pounds apart
Glasgow and Edinburgh top the league at £1,067 and Manchester sits last on £1,053. The table narrowed again - £22 in August, £523 in July - and at this width the order describes our evidence, not Britain.
£14
Top-to-bottom spread
The gate did the work this month
While 550 rows were approved, the range check turned away 213 more whose per-musician-per-hour arithmetic fell outside the bounds for their gig type - 148 artist-panel entries and 65 agency extractions. Nothing had to be withdrawn after the fact, the first clean window in three.
213
Rows refused at the door
412 cells, one grid for every city
Publication stands at 412 cells - 299 city, 91 regional and 22 national - up from 407 in August. Local evidence is still the gap: 174 of the 299 city cells rest on no observations collected in that city, and 99 stand on three or more. See the methodology.
412
Published rate cells
What band size is worth
The wedding curve runs £330 solo, £533 duo, £990 for a 3-4 piece and £1,489 at five-plus - the five-plus figure now identical for two issues running. The duo-to-band step is £457, a shade gentler than the £464 August printed, and the quartet-to-five-plus step is steeper still at £499. Compare rates on artist profiles.
£1,489
5+ piece median
September 2026 Index FAQ
Everything artists, venues and event planners ask about UK gig fees in September 2026 — answered with real data from 4,772 observations across 13 cities.
The September 2026 UK median for a 3-4 piece wedding band is £990 - the same figure August printed, now standing on 1,605 weighted samples instead of 1,588. Half of bookings sit between £717 and £1,370, and the premium tier reaches £1,880. The live rate calculator gives a figure for your own city and lineup.
The headline lineup did not move at all: all six gig-type medians at 3-4 piece printed exactly what they printed in August - weddings £990, private parties £866, corporate £812, festivals £669, ticketed clubs £600 and pubs £350. The movement was underneath them. The pub duo fell £50 to £325 as its sample grew from 45 to 66, three smaller cells rose by £3 to £10, and the other eighteen national tiles did not move. The pool itself grew by 341 observations.
Glasgow and Edinburgh are nominally joint top at £1,067, with Manchester at the foot on £1,053 and London and Liverpool on £1,057. Fourteen pounds separate top from bottom, down from twenty-two in August. At that width the ordering is not a meaningful league, and we would rather say so than dress it up.
The same 1,069 location-less rows - national price lists and union minimums - sit behind all thirteen wedding cells, so a city moves off that shared baseline only as far as its own local evidence pushes it. Manchester is last on 84 local rows and London joint second-last on 96, our two deepest local samples, while Edinburgh and Glasgow top the table on ten and eighteen. Bristol, third on 64 local rows, is the counter-example. We print it as a hypothesis, not a result.
A 3-4 piece pub or bar booking pays £350, with most between £255 and £600 and the premium end at £750. Solo pub work sits at £250, a duo at £325 and a five-plus lineup at £525. The duo is the one pub cell that moved this month, down £50 from August on a sample that grew from 45 to 66. The 3-4 piece is the first pub figure in the series to be properly tested: the cell grew from 187 weighted samples to 274 across the window and the median did not move.
The range check turned away 213 of the 763 rows presented across the window - 148 artist-panel entries and 65 agency extractions whose per-musician-per-hour arithmetic fell outside the bounds set for their gig type. Cumulatively it has refused 391 rows since it was restored in July. Nothing had to be withdrawn after approval this window, which had not happened in three issues.
511 came from the monthly artist panel and 39 from the weekly agency rate-card scans; no other source contributed a row. 209 of the 550 had already landed inside the 3 September refresh the August issue published from, so the growth this issue claims against it is the remaining 341. The anonymous public form took no reports at all this window.
At 3-4 piece, weddings lead on £990, private parties follow at £866 and corporate bookings at £812, with festivals on £669 and ticketed clubs on £600. The £124 gap between weddings and private parties is unchanged from August. The corporate and festival cells at this lineup size rest on six and five observations and carry a low-sample flag in the report, so check the sample size before quoting either.
Local evidence, ahead of everything else: 174 of the 299 city cells rest on no observations collected in that city, and only 99 stand on three or more. Confirmed platform bookings contribute zero rows for a fifth consecutive issue despite holding a 0.15 ceiling. Venue budgets restart from nothing. Theatre is a single national cell and the club picture stays directional on three and four observations. You can close the first gap in sixty seconds at gigxchange.app/rates.
Help us make the next issue better
Every gig you've done is a data point we need. Submit three rates anonymously and you unlock every figure for 30 days.