May Morning 2026 — first-hand notes
It's quarter to five on the first of May, and Magpie Lane is already moving. Pairs and small groups, hoods up against the cold, voices low — all heading the same way through the dark colleges toward a tower they can't yet see. By six, fifteen thousand of them will be packed onto the High Street, looking up.
Walking down before dawn
Walking down through the central colleges before five is its own thing — not a crowd yet, but a slow drift of people heading the same way, voices low, the whole city tilting eastward. By Magpie Lane the tower is in sight and the pace picks up.
The singing
The crowd built sharply from about 5:30 a.m. along the High Street west of Magdalen Bridge. By the singing, the queue of bodies stretched back well past Queen's Lane — visibly bigger than the most recent years, helped by the holiday landing on a Friday and a clean, dry forecast.
Sunrise broke just as the choir finished. No rain, no wind, and the kind of dawn that pulls bigger numbers — the sun coming up the High Street as the Hymnus Eucharisticus gave way to Now Is the Month of Maying.
"The mood flips from reflective to celebratory in the space of a few bars."
Sol Samba kicks it off
The drums start the moment the singing ends. Sol Samba — the Oxford-based Brazilian percussion band, formed in 1999 and a May Morning fixture for over twenty years — assembles at the Longwall Street corner before six and begins the procession up the High Street as the choir on the tower finishes. It is the loudest single moment of the morning. The mood flips from reflective to celebratory in the space of a few bars: drums, whistles, red and yellow kit pushing through the crowd.
They wind through Radcliffe Square and on toward Broad Street, picking up a tail of followers — a parade as much as a band. If you miss the singing, the samba is the next-best anchor: easy to find by ear from anywhere in the centre.
Morris sides through the morning
Morris sides took up positions around the central colleges through the early morning, with crowds gathered three-deep around each set. The exact sides and their schedule for the day weren't posted in any single place I could find — they appear, dance for fifteen minutes, and move on. Worth wandering a half-mile loop through Radcliffe Square, Broad Street and Cornmarket if you want to see more than one.
Coffee and the small details
Coffee vendors set up early along the bridge and on Broad Street. We picked up a sample from Colombia Coffee Roasters with a small printed card reading "May you feel motivated and clear" — a small grace note that captured the morning.
Hot pastries went fast; KNEAD on the Covered Market side was queued out the door by seven.
By eight the formal crowd had broken up entirely. People in formal wear from the all-night college balls were in the cafes, blackened ribbons and champagne flutes tucked under their arms — that particular Oxford cross-section of the very ancient and the very young.
Crowd size for 2026
The official 2026 figure will be published by Oxford City Council in the days following the event. For context, the recent run is roughly 27,000 (2017), 12,500 (2022), 16,500 (2024) — see the crowd-size table on the main page. The 2026 turnout looked, to a non-counter standing on the High Street, comfortably above the 2022 figure.
This page will update once the council publishes its number.
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Further reading
Photographs and notes from the High Street, Magdalen Bridge and central colleges, 1 May 2026.