Chippenham Folk Festival is set to return for three days in May – but it is only guaranteed if more people buy tickets now.

Unless enough tickets are sold by February 25 the show might not go on.

The famous festival, which has run for 45 years, plans to have three internationally-renowned folk acts headlining the event: Belshazzar’s Feast, 3 Daft Monkeys and Kathryn Roberts and Sean Lakeman.

There will also be concerts by folk icon John Kirkpatrick, the festival’s patron, and more than 20 other popular folk acts, ceilidhs with four bands, eight family bands and 15 folk dance acts.

The festival, planned for May 27-29, will also feature family folk workshops, Morris displays in the town centre and arts and crafts and street markets.

Although the £95 'early bird adult weekend' tickets have all sold out and most of the £115 stroller tickets have gone, organisers still need to sell as many tickets as possible in the next fortnight in order to secure deposits on performers and production.

Torquil Macinnes, chairman of the folk festival, revealed that the next two weeks are crucial to its fate and that “a few hundred” more tickets needed to be sold before February 25 to guarantee that the event can go ahead.

He said: “We have an absolutely brilliant team of organisers, made up entirely of volunteers. They are doing everything in their power to bring the festival back to the people of Chippenham and the thousands of visitors we get every year.

“However, with uncertainty around live events still rife, we do have a cut-off point by which we must have reached a certain sales target to guarantee it will happen.

“With the fantastic line-up we already have, we are very confident it will go ahead, but we need to ask people to consider buying their tickets a little earlier than usual to make sure of it”.

This Is Wiltshire: The famous festival draws crowds of thousandsThe famous festival draws crowds of thousands

Mr Macinnes added: “Not only does Chippenham Folk Festival offer an extremely high calibre of artists, but it is dedicated to traditional English dance and music.

“What sets it apart from other events is its opportunities for participation and education. It truly is a social occasion.

“It is for this reason that the global pandemic has hit us so hard. We are interactive. We need to be face to face with the people of Chippenham and beyond. I am delighted that we are going full steam ahead to bring the event back to the streets of Chippenham in 2022.”

Organisers need more help to stage the event and they are appealing for more volunteers who can help as stewards, set designers and builders, bar staff and radio communications specialists. To find out how you can get involved, visit https://www.chippfolk.co.uk/get-involved/

To buy tickets, which range from £20 to £115 and are fully refundable if the event cannot go ahead, go to: https://www.chippfolk.co.uk/tickets-2022/