Salon du Chat Returned to Electric Picnic 2026

Years and years running now, and there we were again, back in the Mindfield Arena, wellies on, kettle going, and our favourite: getting strangers to sit down and actually talk to each other.

We say this every year and we mean it every year: we love bringing Salon du Chat back to Electric Picnic. We keep doing it because it's THE weekend that we stop, prepare and celebrate the power of conversations, beyond our everyday lunchtime chats. 

What is Salon du Chat?

If this is the first you're hearing of Salon du Chat, here's the short version: it's a pop-up conversation café we run in the Mindfield Arena, and instead of ordering food, you order a conversation topic. There's a menu we carefully curate every year with current topics, things that we’ve been talking about everywhere, or things that deserve more attention than what they got. You pick something from the menu, you sit down, and get stuck into real conversation and story sharing with your best friend, or better again, your new EP buddy. 

Stories beyond the Instagram feature

When you hear ‘sharing a story’ probably the first thing that comes to your mind is posting an image on socials that’s only available for 24h (and hey, we’re there too). Actually, a good example for a metaphor here: You post a story about something you feel strongly about, cool. Two lines, a nice font, maybe a poll sticker if you're feeling brave. And that's it, that's the conversation.

Except it isn't? Nobody's actually talking back (the likes from your Instagram close friends don’t count, sorry).

Say the same opinion out loud to a person sitting across from you, and it's a completely different sport. You can't edit yourself halfway through a sentence, you have to just say the thing. And then (this is the good part) you have to listen to whatever comes back (!!!). And they might completely disagree, they might know something you don't and then ruin your whole argument in one sentence. Or they might make you say your point again, and make it actually hold up.

This is the situation that you get from sitting with a total stranger who has zero reason to be nice about it, and who might perhaps give you their number and stay in touch and become real life friends, or who more likely, you will never see again. That's the whole magic trick of Salon du Chat.

This year's crowd favourites

This year's theme was Time, and we built a whole menu around it, past and present and whatever's coming next. We’re very proud of our entire menu, there were quite some hard picks there, but there were some topics that kept popping up again and again. These were what the EP audience of 2026 wanted to talk about:

• Curses are real - ask Mayo
• Wet, cold and soggy | The new perfect holiday description
• Death driving for likes
• Thirsty data centres drink the Shannon
• What's the fuss with snus?

If you sat down with us this year, thanks for the chat! If you didn't get the chance, there's always next August.

Hope to see you there!