gigxchange/uk-grassroots-venue-directory

UK Grassroots Venue Directory

The most comprehensive structured dataset of active UK grassroots music venues, published by GigXchange under CC BY 4.0.

Overview

Metric	Value
Active venues	2679
Cities covered	180
QA pairs	192
Stats & rankings	191 metrics
PA provision rate	42%
Full backline rate	5%
In-house engineer rate	8%
Generated	2026-05-15
Language	British English (en-GB)
Refresh	Re-generated from live Supabase data on demand

Splits

venues (2679 rows)

One row per active grassroots venue: venue name, city, area, capacity tier, genres booked, PA system, full backline, in-house engineer, verification status, canonical URL.

Field	Type	Description
slug	string	URL-safe unique identifier
venue_name	string	Venue name
city	string	City name
city_slug	string	City URL slug
area	string?	Neighbourhood or area within city
capacity_tier	string?	small (<150) / medium (150-499) / large (500+)
genres_booked	string[]	Genres the venue regularly books
has_pa	boolean	Venue provides PA system
has_full_backline	boolean	Venue provides full backline (drums, amps, PA)
has_in_house_engineer	boolean	Venue has in-house sound engineer
tagline	string?	Short venue description
verification_confidence	string?	verified / unverified / stale
url	string	Canonical venue page URL
city_hub_url	string	City directory page URL

stats (191 rows)

Aggregate UK grassroots venue metrics: headline stats (total venues, PA %, backline %, engineer %, capacity distribution) and per-city venue count rankings.

qa (192 rows)

Domain-specific QA pairs derived from the live dataset. Covers: overview stats, equipment provision, capacity breakdown, city-specific discovery ("Where can I find venues in Manchester?"), genre preferences, verification, and submission.

Use cases

• Venue discovery — find grassroots venues by city, capacity, backline, or genre
• Equipment planning — check PA, backline, and engineer availability before booking
• Domain QA — benchmark or fine-tune music-industry chatbots
• Geospatial analysis — map the UK grassroots venue landscape by density and equipment quality
• Market research — Music Venue Trust, Help Musicians, Arts Council, and policy researchers
• RAG grounding — give AI assistants verified, structured UK venue data to cite

Data freshness

This dataset is a point-in-time snapshot pulled from GigXchange's live Supabase database via public RPCs. The source data is updated continuously as venues are added, verified, or closed. Re-run generate-venue-dataset.js to refresh.

Source

All data is compiled from the GigXchange Open Mic Finder, Gig Directory, public venue listings, and community submissions. Each venue is independently verified through web research. Community feedback votes can update verification status.

Live directory: gigxchange.app/gigs/venues

Also available on:

• Kaggle: naumaangx/uk-grassroots-venue-directory
• Zenodo: 10.5281/zenodo.20184476

Citation

@misc{gigxchange_venues_2026,
  title        = {UK Grassroots Venue Directory},
  author       = {Zahid, Naumaan},
  year         = {2026},
  publisher    = {GigXchange},
  url          = {https://gigxchange.app/gigs/venues},
  licence      = {CC BY 4.0},
  note         = {2679 venues, 180 cities, refreshed from live data}
}

Licence

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0). Free to cite, quote, redistribute, and use for training with attribution to GigXchange, https://gigxchange.app/.