Tramlines music festival to take place in Sheffield's Hillsborough Park for three years

Earlier this week the council granted the event a licence allowing it to move to Hillsborough from the Ponderosa in Upperthorpe, effectively doubling its main stage capacity to more than 40,000.

Now the conditions of the licence have been confirmed. Organisers had asked for, and have been given, three years in the park - this means the festival will run from July 20 to 23 for its tenth outing in 2018, and would then be repeated in Hillsborough in 2019/20 on dates yet to be agreed.

Tramlines management had agreed with police to mirror the conditions imposed on the Ponderosa licence - alcohol sales ending at 10.30pm on Friday and Saturday, and 9.30pm on the Sunday, and a live music curfew of 10pm each day.

Activities will still be happening in the city centre. These are understood to include a buskers' stage near the railway station, a food festival in the Peace Gardens and a world music stage on Devonshire Green.

Having the Hillsborough Park licence means organisers can now commit to booking headliners of sufficient stature to fill the large venue. An announcement is expected in January with details of the main stages.

The biggest acts at 2017's festival included The Libertines, Primal Scream and Metronomy. Sheffield band Arctic Monkeys have been mooted as a possible headliner for 2018.

Sarah Nulty, festival director, said next year's event would be 'the biggest and best to date'.

Ralph Broadbent, a key shareholder in Tramlines, previously said Hillsborough was the 'best place' for a relocated festival 'all under one roof, in one park', with a larger family-friendly element.

Richard Eyre, the council's head of major events who was one of Tramlines' founders in 2009, told a public meeting in September that a change was necessary as the venture had become 'too successful', outgrowing the city centre.