Once a year, Parliament Hill turns into the most colourful sky in London. Here's everything you need to know about the Kite Festival — and why it is worth planning your calendar around.
There is a particular combination of events on a warm weekend afternoon in late spring that transforms Parliament Hill from a pleasant viewpoint into something that briefly resembles a field in a picture book. The grass is green. The London skyline sits on the horizon to the south. And overhead, at every altitude from rooftop height to the edge of visibility, there are kites: box kites and diamond kites, fighter kites and novelty kites shaped like sharks and dragons and the faces of politicians. The sky over Parliament Hill during the Kite Festival is, without any irony intended, one of the most purely joyful sights in London.
The Hampstead Heath Kite Festival has been running since 1987. It is free to attend. It is managed entirely by volunteers. It draws thousands of visitors annually. And it is, consistently, one of the most underreported events in the London calendar — the kind of thing that locals know about and visitors almost never hear of until they stumble across it by accident. This guide is designed to eliminate the accidental element.
The Event
The festival typically takes place on the second weekend of May, on Parliament Hill. The specific dates vary year to year — check the Heath Kite Fliers website or the City of London Corporation's events calendar in early spring for confirmed dates. The event runs across both Saturday and Sunday, with Sunday typically the busier day.
The format is informal: participants bring their own kites and fly them; the organisers provide a framework of categories and judging, but the primary activity is simply flying and watching. There are formal competition categories — best fighter kite, best novelty kite, best team display — but these sit alongside casual participation that requires no entry and no registration. You can bring a kite from the toy shop, turn up, and fly it alongside the serious enthusiasts with their purpose-built sport kites.
Parliament Hill as the Venue
Parliament Hill is not an accidental choice for a kite festival. The hill rises approximately 30 metres above the Heath floor, providing a consistent updraft that makes kite launching easier than at ground level. The open grassland — there are no trees on the summit that would catch a line — extends for several hundred metres in every direction, allowing serious kite handlers the room they need for manoeuvring. And the southern aspect, with the London skyline behind every kite, creates a visual context that no purpose-built event space could replicate.
The views from Parliament Hill are exceptional on any day, but during the festival they become extraordinary: the combination of the kites overhead and the city on the horizon produces a layering of the urban and the elemental that photographs well but does not quite capture the experience of standing in the middle of it. Our full guide to Parliament Hill and the London skyline covers the view in detail and includes advice on the best times for clear visibility.
Types of Kites You Will See
Fighter kites: The most technically impressive. Fighter kite pilots manoeuvre small, highly responsive kites in direct competition with other pilots, attempting to cut competitors' lines using their own. The skill involved is considerable; watching two experienced fighters work is genuinely absorbing.
Sport kites: Larger, twin-line or quad-line kites designed for display rather than competition. The best sport kite pilots perform choreographed routines — loops, dives, precision formations — that are closer to aerobatics than kite-flying in the conventional sense.
Novelty kites: The crowd-pleasers. The category includes kites shaped like animals, vehicles, fictional characters, and occasional political figures. A well-made octopus kite at altitude is a genuinely impressive sight. A shark kite at full altitude, with its trailing tail, can be visible from several streets away.
Traditional kites: Diamond kites, box kites, and delta kites — the forms that most people associate with kite-flying — are well-represented. For anyone interested in the simpler end of the activity, the festival is a good place to see what a well-tuned traditional kite can do in competent hands.
Making a Day of It
The festival pairs naturally with a broader Hampstead Heath day. Arrive early — the crowds build through the morning and the hill is busy by midday. After the festival, the natural continuation is a walk north along the eastern edge of the Heath, past the bathing ponds, to Kenwood. The contrast between the festival energy of Parliament Hill and the quiet of the northern Heath is one of the better available transitions in London.
For those bringing children, the kite festival combines well with the playgrounds and wide open spaces nearby. Our guide to Hampstead Heath playgrounds for children covers the best family facilities within the Heath and in the surrounding area.
For food, the options immediately around Parliament Hill are limited to the Parliament Hill café (basic hot food, sandwiches, coffee). The better options are a ten-minute walk towards the High Street — our guide to Hampstead's best brunch spots covers venues within reasonable distance of the Heath.
Bringing Your Own Kite
Participation in the festival does not require registration. If you bring a kite, you can fly it. The organisers ask that powered kites (drones and similar) are kept away from the festival area during official flying hours — Parliament Hill has specific drone restriction zones anyway, and the festival organisers are understandably firm on this point.
For first-time kite buyers, the combination of wind on Parliament Hill and the wide open space makes traditional diamond kites and delta kites the most reliable starting point. Both are available in toy shops in Hampstead and online; a decent entry-level example costs between £15 and £40. Avoid the very cheap single-piece kites that fold and break in the first serious gust.
Wind conditions on Parliament Hill during the festival are generally reliable — the hill's exposure means that even on days when the city below is still, there is usually enough movement at altitude for stable flight. The ideal wind speed for kite flying is 8–24 km/h; below this, many kites will not stay aloft. Check the forecast before the day, though the festival's thirty-plus-year track record suggests conditions are suitable more often than not.
One Final Note
The Kite Festival is, in its essence, a demonstration that London still makes room for things that are simply enjoyable — activities with no commercial angle, no corporate sponsorship, no queuing system, and no mechanism for extracting money from participants. It has been free since 1987 and is run by people who do it because they love kite-flying and want others to share it. That kind of thing is rarer in contemporary London than it should be. It is worth turning up for.
