GigXchange Index - UK Live Music Rates, October 2026

GigXchange Index, Issue 07 - October 2026. Monthly open dataset of what live music pays in the UK, by city, event type and band size. Every figure is artist take-home in GBP: agency-published rates are normalised by stripping a 20% commission before any percentile is computed. The files are a snapshot of exactly what gigxchange.app published on 2026-10-28 - the same figures shown on the site and in the monthly report, with no export-side filtering. Each issue measures the market at a moment in time and does not revise the month before it; each issue is its own record with its own DOI. What UK gigs paid in October 2026: seven medians rose, none fell, and a 3-4 piece wedding band hit GBP 1,000. Fees by city, gig type and band size. Headline figures GBP 1,000 - Wedding band fees, UK national: A 3-4 piece wedding band takes GBP 1,000 in October 2026, up GBP 10 on September, on 1,616 observations rather than 1,605. The middle half of bookings land between GBP 729 and GBP 1,405, with the premium tier at GBP 1,900. GBP 350 - The pub fee that held, and why: A 3-4 piece pub gig pays £350 again, and all four pub medians held while their samples grew. Most of the new pub rows came from the monthly artist panel, and 307 of its 390 October rows were members restating the rate they gave in September, so the steadiness mostly reflects steady asking prices rather than a fresh test of what pubs pay. GBP 17 - Thirteen cities, seventeen pounds apart: Edinburgh leads the wedding league at GBP 1,082, and London, Manchester, Birmingham and Liverpool share the foot on GBP 1,065. The national figure, GBP 1,000, sits below every city, because each city cell shares the same 1,080 location-less rows while the national cell takes in all 536 located ones at once. 145 - The range check turned away 145 new rows: Since the September refresh the range check refused 145 rows whose per-musician-per-hour arithmetic fell outside the bounds for their gig type - 111 artist-panel entries and 34 agency listings. Agency rows fared worst: 34 of the 61 new ones were refused. Nothing had to be withdrawn after approval. 414 - 414 cells, one grid for every city: Publication stands at 414 cells - 299 city, 93 regional and 22 national. Local evidence is still the gap: 173 of the 299 city cells rest on no observations collected in that city, and 100 stand on three or more. See the methodology. GBP 1,489 - What band size is worth: The wedding curve runs £333 solo, £541 duo, £1,000 for a 3-4 piece and £1,489 at five-plus, the five-plus figure unchanged from September. A second player on a solo booking adds £208 at the median, a duo becoming a band adds £459, and the steepest step, 3-4 piece to five-plus, is £489. Compare rates on artist profiles. Measured or derived - read is_imputed. 215 cells are measured, 199 are derived. A city cell is measured only when it holds at least 3 observations collected in that city; below that it still publishes, labelled is_imputed = true, imputation_method = blanket_pool (the location-less national layer applied to that city). Region and UK rows are measured by definition. Filter is_imputed = false for measured-only analysis. Files. gx-index-october-2026.csv - 414 published rate cells (299 city, 93 region, 22 UK baseline); sources.csv - every source class, its approved-observation count (5,192 in total) and its quota cap; README.txt - column descriptions, collection method and honest limits. Honest limits. These are advertised, asked or budgeted rates, not a record of money that changed hands (about 69% of the corpus is agency rate cards). Not a census, not a recommended price, not financial advice. Many cells rest on few observations; weigh sample_size. A derived cell is an estimate, never evidence. Publisher. GigXchange - the UK peer-to-peer live music marketplace (Wikidata Q139677384). Author: Naumaan Zahid (Wikidata Q139677387). The issue: https://gigxchange.app/rates/reports/october-2026. Live figures: gigxchange.app/rates. Methodology: gigxchange.app/rates/methodology. Also on HuggingFace and Kaggle. Licensed CC BY 4.0 - free to use, including commercially, with attribution: GigXchange Index, UK Live Music Booking Rates 2026. https://gigxchange.app/rates