Festival Poster Maker

Making a festival lineup poster

A festival poster is read from the top down. The headliners sell the tickets, so they are set biggest, and every tier below them drops a size. Put the festival's name in as the headline and the headliners in the top tier, then work down: up to four tiers and forty acts. The names run together with a bullet between them and wrap where they fit, and a band's name is never split across two lines.

Add a set time after any name (Pig Iron @ 9pm) and it prints beside it. For a club night or an all-dayer where the times are the point, switch "The bill" to set times instead: one act per line, with the times lined up in a column of their own.

Every look in the studio works with a tiered bill. Press Versions to see twelve at once, and the finished poster downloads at every size, including a print-ready A4 for the gates.

Making a poster that actually gets people to the show

A gig poster has one job: someone glances at it in a feed, and three things land — who's playing, where, and when. Everything else is decoration. The styles here are built around that order, so the headline act takes the space it needs and the date never ends up as small grey text nobody reads.

Not sure where to start?

Pick one of the gig poster templates — 23 starting points covering zine, neon, ticket, photo and print looks, each already sized for the place it's going. Choosing one only sets the style, size and colour, so anything you've already typed stays put. You can also browse the poster gallery to see what other bands and promoters have made.

Which size do I need?

• Portrait (1080×1350) — the default for an Instagram or Facebook feed post. Takes up the most screen space as people scroll.
• Story (1080×1920) — full-screen Instagram or Facebook stories.
• Square (1080×1080) — safe everywhere, good for a grid that needs to stay tidy.
• A4 and A5 — 300dpi print files for flyers on the merch table and posters in the venue window.

Do I need a photo?

No — every style works on type alone, and the zine style in particular is designed to look like a photocopied flyer with nothing but text. If you do add a band photo, the zine style halftones it down to black and white the way a real photocopier would.

Is it really free?

Yes. No signup to make or download a poster, and no charge to take the file away. Posters carry a small moshradar.com credit at the bottom; if you'd rather it wasn't there, a free account turns it off.

Playing a show that's already listed?

If your gig is on Moshradar, open it from the events listing and hit the poster link — the lineup, venue and date come through already filled in. Promoters running shows with us can do the same from the promoter portal.

Can I print it?

Yes — A4 and A5 come out at 300dpi, which is what a print shop asks for, and "Print PDF with bleed" wraps them in a PDF with 3mm of bleed and crop marks so the shop can trim to the edge. Tick the QR code box and the printed poster carries a "scan for tickets" code — for a gig listed here it opens the gig's page, with the ticket link on it. The Instagram sizes are screen resolution and will look soft on paper, so if the poster is going in a window, pick a print size from the start rather than scaling one up afterwards.

Posting the same gig again?

A show gets announced four or five times — on sale, the week of, the day before, last tickets, sold out. Rather than making a new poster each time, pick a stamp: it lays a sash across the corner of the poster you already have. "All sizes" downloads the feed, story, square, Facebook cover and print versions in one go, and on a phone the Share button sends the poster straight to Instagram or WhatsApp.

Can I change the fonts, colours and layout?

Yes — every style is a starting point. Open Customise and take it anywhere: set the bill left, split it under a photo or run the photo down one side; set the headline in any of 30 fonts, from blackletter to wet paint, or as a letterpress stack where every line runs the full width; give it chrome, 3D, a drop shadow or worn edges. Pick one of the curated palettes or any colour at all, turn your photo into halftone dots or a three-ink screen print, lay rays, stripes or a grid behind it, and finish with grain, worn ink, a misprint or fold marks. Click any part of the poster to change just that part, and undo anything you regret. Colours that would disappear against their background are swapped for black or white automatically, so a light accent never loses your date.

Not sure which look to go for?

Press Versions above the poster and you get twelve takes on your gig at once: every style, in different palettes, fonts, grounds and photo treatments, all with your own bill and photo. Pick one to use its look. If one is nearly right, ask for more like it and you get eleven close relatives, each with one or two things changed. Your words never change, and undo takes you straight back.

Tour dates, festival bills and set times

A gig is one date; a tour is twenty. Switch "The bill" to Tour dates for every date, city and venue in columns (the tour poster maker opens that way), to Festival tiers for a lineup set in shrinking tiers (the festival poster maker), or to Set times for a club night's running order.

Can I use our band logo?

Yes. Under "Headline lettering", pick any of the faces from the band logo maker and the headline act is set as a logo in that style — arched, outlined, shadowed or slanted if you like — and coloured to suit the poster.

Who owns the poster?

You do. Print it, sell tickets with it, post it wherever you like. You are responsible for holding the rights to any artwork or photo you upload — worth saying because a press shot usually belongs to the photographer rather than the band.

Does my artwork get uploaded?

Not unless you ask for a share link. The poster is drawn in your browser, so previews and downloads never leave your device. Getting a share link is what uploads the finished image, so it can live at its own URL for the rest of the bill to grab.