Ticket terms
These are the terms you agree to when you buy a ticket through Mela. They are written to be read, so please do.
Last updated 6 November 2026.
Who you are buying from
Your ticket is sold to you by the event organiser, not by Mela. The organiser decides the event, the prices, the entry conditions and the refund policy, and they are the one you have a contract with. Their name is on the event page, on your order and on your ticket.
Mela is the platform they use. Mela acts as the organiser's agent for taking your payment, issuing your ticket and emailing it to you. Our booking fee, where there is one, is what we charge for that service.
This matters when something goes wrong: the organiser is responsible for the event, and we are responsible for the ticketing.
What you pay
Every price we show you includes all compulsory fees. There is no fee added at the last step. Where an organiser chooses to absorb our booking fee, the price you see is simply the price you pay.
Prices include VAT where the organiser is registered for it. Your order shows the VAT inside the price.
We take payment through Stripe. We never see or store your full card details.
When your order is complete
Your order is complete, and your contract with the organiser is made, when your payment succeeds and we send your ticket. Until then nothing is reserved for you beyond the short hold we place while you are paying.
Very occasionally we may have to cancel an order after taking payment, for example if a fault let more tickets be sold than exist, or if the payment is later reversed. If we cancel your order we refund everything you paid.
Refunds and cancelling
Because an event happens on a set date, the law does not give you a 14-day cooling-off period on a ticket. This is the exemption in regulation 28(1)(h) of the Consumer Contracts (Information, Cancellation and Additional Charges) Regulations 2013. So you cannot change your mind and return a ticket as you could with most online purchases.
Instead, the organiser's refund policy applies, and it is shown to you on the event page before you pay. Some organisers allow refunds up to a number of days before the event, and some allow none at all.
If the organiser cancels the event, you are entitled to a refund of everything you paid, including our booking fee.
If the organiser moves the event to another date or venue, or changes it in a way that makes it substantially different from what you bought, you can ask them for a refund.
Refunds go back to the card you paid with. They are made by the organiser, from the money they received, and can take a few working days to appear.
None of this affects your statutory rights, including your rights if the event is not provided with reasonable care and skill.
Your ticket
Each ticket carries a QR code that admits one person once. The first scan is the one that gets in, so do not post your ticket publicly or send the same one to more than one person. If a code is presented twice, the second person can be refused entry, and we cannot tell which of them is the rightful holder.
If your ticket has a name on it, the organiser may ask that person for identification at the door.
Keep your ticket email. You can always find your tickets again at Find my tickets, using the email address you bought with.
Anyone with the link in your order email can see that order, so treat it like the ticket itself.
Getting in
Entry is on the organiser's conditions, which can include a minimum age, searches, and what you may bring. They are shown on the event page where the organiser has given them.
The organiser can refuse entry, or ask someone to leave, for example for behaviour that puts other people at risk. Where that happens because their conditions were broken, there is normally no refund.
Reselling
Tickets are for you and the people you bought them for. They may not be resold for more than you paid, offered as a prize, or used for advertising without the organiser agreeing first.
We can void a ticket we have good reason to believe was resold commercially, and where we do, we will tell the person who bought it.
Your information
What we do with your information, and who we share it with, is set out in our privacy notice.
If you buy for other people and give us their name or email address, please tell them. We will email them their own ticket, and that email says who gave us their address.
If something goes wrong
For anything about the event itself — what happened on the day, a refund under the policy, a lost item — contact the organiser. The event page and your order email say how.
For anything about ticketing — an order that did not arrive, a payment taken twice, a ticket that will not scan — contact us and we will sort it out.
Our responsibility is for the ticketing service we provide. We are not responsible for the event or for what the organiser does, and our liability to you for our own service is limited to the amount of our booking fee on your order. Nothing in these terms limits our liability for death or personal injury caused by our negligence, for fraud, or for anything else that cannot be limited by law.
Changes to these terms, and the law that applies
We may change these terms. The terms that apply to your order are the ones published when you bought, and the date at the top says when this version was published.
These terms are governed by the law of England and Wales, and the courts of England and Wales have jurisdiction. If you live in Scotland or Northern Ireland, you can also bring proceedings in your own courts.