Top 10 quirky tents you won’t believe actually exist

With its unique rounded shape, this tent from Quechua was undoubtedly cool – but was fairly bonkers as well. You’ve heard of the bubble car, well this was the bubble tent! 

Launched in 2023, it was self-inflating, but didn’t actually have any poles or beams. Instead, it was fitted with an electric fan which ran constantly to fill the inside with air, like a giant balloon. Bizarrely, you had to enter the bedroom/living space through a space station-style airlock door which had to be kept shut at all times or the tent would collapse. 

The best thing about the Skyview was its unique skylight – a huge circular, PVC window that took up most of the roof – allowing you to gaze up at the night sky from the comfort of your bed. It all tapped into one of the most romantic ideas about camping, of being able to sleep under the stars. 

But at £1,500 for a two-berth tent this always looked like being a fairly niche product and so it proved as it’s no longer available.

FieldCandy tents turned heads with their eye-catching designs featuring everything from watermelons and farm animals to David Bowie and Iron Maiden, and just about everything in between. 

One of the most popular designs was the “World’s Smallest Pub” – but these weren’t novelty tents. The simple A-frame style was a throwback to tents of yesteryear but the materials were up-to-the-minute, with a UV and fire-retardant flysheet and a hydrostatic head rating of 5,000mm. 

Sadly, the brand is no longer in production, but for a while FieldCandy tents were the stars of the campsite.

Camping by water is always popular – camping on water, less so. But the inventors of this floating tent clearly felt that pitching up on dry land was just too straightforward. The Shoal Tent, and its built-in mattress raft, inflates on the waterside, then is dropped onto the river or lake where you can gently float along ‘til your heart’s content.

Unlike most tents, you’ll need to keep an eye out for white water rapids, hungry sharks and passing pirates – and you’ll have to be very careful if you need to make a visit to the loo in the middle of the night. 

Glastonbury is the spiritual home of all things alternative, so it was fitting that a mobile phone company chose the festival to show off this prototype for a solar tent a few years back. 

Its cutting edge technology would allow campers to keep in touch and power their essential camping gadgets using electricity provided from the sunshine.

 

The silver reflective outer fabric on this pop-up tent from Mountain Warehouse was designed to reflect heat and keep the inside of the tent cooler. 

The extra layer of black lining also helped keep the tent darker for longer in the morning. And any festivalgoer who has wakened up in a pool of sweat the morning after the night before will certainly appreciate that.

The trouble is, it also looked a bit like a giant Sunday roast wrapped in tin-foil.

You can always rely on the Dutch to come up with a wacky creation or two – there must be something in the brownies... 

These onion-shaped tents designed by Dre Wapenaar hang from trees like giant pods from a 1970s sci-fi movie. They were originally inspired by British eco-activists but are now on a campsite in the low countries.