The Facebook and Instagram pages of one of the biggest food festivals in Cornwall have been seized by hackers – leaving it desperately trying to rebuild followers ahead of next year’s event.

Porthleven Food Festival described its social media pages as “absolutely critical” for promoting the free-to-attend event, which often takes place at the end of April but next year runs across the first weekend in May.

Despite being in an “ongoing dispute” with Meta Inc, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, for the last five months, it has been forced to set up new pages in the meantime and begin the “long and difficult process” to rebuild its reach.

Now it wants to get the word out – and is offering the chance to win a selection of tickets and goodies to anyone following the pages, by way of a raffle just before the event, which takes place between Friday, May 2 and Sunday, May 4 2025.

Posting on its new Facebook page, ‘The Porthleven Food Fest’, the festival team said: “Our Meta Business manager has been seized by hackers, this means that we have lost access to our Facebook and Instagram pages.

“This page is absolutely critical for the promotion of this free to attend, long standing community festival. So please like, subscribe and share to fellow lovers of the festival so that we can continue to promote the event.

“We have been part of an ongoing dispute with Meta Inc to attempt to reclaim our page for around five months now, and whilst the case is not yet resolved, it is looking less and less likely that we will ever get our page back.

“With next year’s festival on the horizon, we are left with no choice but to start again. It's going to be a long and difficult process to rebuild, but we are where we are.

“So please follow this new Porthleven Food Festival page and Instagram @theporthlevenfoodfest to stay up to date with happenings for 2025’s festival.”

Jude Kereama of Porthleven’s Kota and Kota Kai and Tom Brown of Pearly Queen and Cornerstone get the demonstrations underway at this year's festival​ (Image: Kathy White) Anyone with doubts about the legitimacy of this new page can email the production company behind the festival on hello@missioncode.co.uk

They went on to add: “By way of thanks for your support, all new followers between now and the festival taking place 2nd – 4th May 2025 will be entered into a raffle to win four free Gourmet Weekend tickets for this year’s festival, plus four Feast Tickets and other goodies.

“So please like and share as much as you can, so that we can rebuild our following and continue to promote the festival for years to come.

“Thank you for your continued support. With love, Team PFF.”

The award-winning event - which took home gold in the Tourism/Festival Event of the Year category of the Cornwall Tourism Awards in 2022, and silver in 2023 – is an annual celebration of food and music, with food demonstrations, stalls and live music over the course of three days.