On April 4, 2026, Good Friday, the first crop formation of the British season was reported on Bondip Hill near Ilchester, Somerset, just north of the A303: a small cross inside a ring, about 100 feet long, pressed into a field of bright yellow oilseed rape.

Oilseed rape, or canola, is usually the first crop to mature in the UK, so the season tends to open in its fields. In wet years it often doesn’t happen at all. This year it did, early. On April 29 a small dumbbell design turned up on Waden Hill, between Silbury Hill and the Avebury stone circle in Wiltshire. Coast to Coast AM called it the earliest start to the season since 2022, though that tally appears to have missed the Somerset circle.

Then came barley. A large pentagonal design about 200 feet across appeared at Jack’s Plantation near Bruton on May 8. A six-fold “spinner” near Kingweston, Somerset, followed on May 10, apparently laid down in stages. A four-fold design 180 feet across appeared on White Sheet Hill near Warminster on May 22, and on May 30 a three-fold design marked the year’s first circle in wheat, near Ditcheat. That’s six by the end of May, more than any spring since 2020, according to the researchers who track them.

Who makes them is the perennial question. Many formations are known to be the work of human teams with boards and rope. The researchers who document them, and the visitors who come to stand in them, mostly leave that question open.