What is Glastonbury Festival?
Glastonbury, or ‘Glasto’ is actually the Glastonbury Festival of Contemporary Performing Arts. It’s the most famous music festival in the world . It doesn’t actually take place I the town of Glastonbury Somerset, England. It’s hosted just outside of a town called Pilton, 5 miles down the road.
The festival was first held in 1970, the day after Jimi Hendrix died, and was known as the Pilton Festival. Over the decades, it has grown in size and popularity, and it is now a major event in the global cultural calendar, attracting leading artists from different genres and mediums, including music, dance, comedy, theatre, circus, cabaret, and other arts. It's known for its eclectic line-up.
The festival takes place over five days over the last full weekend in June. There are close to 100 stages across the festival, the most famous of which is the Pyramid Stage, where the biggest acts perform. Other stages and areas offer a variety of entertainment and experiences, from small acoustic performances and DJ sets to comedy, theatre, and more. There are also dozens of unannounced and secret sets over the weekend. These are not revealed until the last moment. The best source of information for secret sets is SecretGlasto, you can follow them on BlueSky https://bsky.app/profile/secretglasto.bsky.social
Glastonbury is also known for championing social and environmental causes. You will see Greenpeace, Oxfam and Wateraid represented through the site, they also take a sizeable numbers of volunteers with them. Volunteering is a popular route into the festival for those who didn’t manage to get a ticket. We have more on that in Part 8.
Glastonbury has a unique atmosphere, compared with other large festivals in the UK. The site is vast, offering so much more than just the music stages. These include the Green Fields, an area focused on spirituality and environmentalism; the Healing Fields, where festival-goers can experience alternative therapies; and Shangri-La, an area with its own unique theme each year and line-up of underground music and art.
What are fallow years?
The festival usually takes a "fallow year" every five years to give the land, local population, and organisers a break. This means that there's no festival that year. The most recent fallow year was in 2018 and the next one is 2026.
What happened during Covid?
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the festival was cancelled in 2020 and 2021. It was replaced with a family campsite in 2021 called “Worthy Pastures”. For more information about Worthy Pastures visit this page.
When is it?
The Festival takes place over the last full weekend in June that coincides with the weekend after the summer solstice. It spans five days from Wednesday to Sunday (with the music running to 5am Monday morning).
The main stages don't start until Friday, but the festival site opens on the Wednesday, providing plenty of time to explore the site and finding the little corners of fun away from the music.
What happens at the festival?
Music, of course, takes centre stage. From the monolithic Pyramid Stage, hosting globally acclaimed headliners, to the smaller stages like the Croissant Neuf. You’ll find folk in tipis and acoustic set under trees. Whether you're a fan of rock, pop, folk, jazz, electronic, or reggae, Glastonbury's line-up caters to every taste.
Glastonbury is home to a variety of other performance spaces, like the Circus and Theatre Fields, where you can witness breathtaking acrobatics, innovative theatre, and hilarious stand-up comedy. The Kidz Field offers puppet shows, magicians, and storytellers for the younger crowd, while the Healing Fields provide a space for meditation and yoga. You can even see late night x-rated Basil Brush in the cabaret tent if you like.
Not to forget the spontaneous performances that spring up around the festival grounds – fire-breathers, stilt-walkers, flash mobs, and roving musicians – adding an element of surprise.
Where is it?
The festival site is actually a few miles east of the town of Glastonbury, close to Pilton, a small village that lent its name to the first festival in 1970. If you are using What3Words try hydration.relations.impulse and you’ll find yourself right in front of the Pyramid stage.
How does the size of the festival compare to other UK festivals?
Lets talk numbers:
Official capacity is 215,000
There are 135,000 tickets in total
Coach and ticket packages make up 22,000 of the total tickets sold
There are 2,800 performances
Food is sold from roughly 400 food stalls
No single use plastic water bottles were sold in 2022
For comparison, Leeds and Reading Capacity is roughly 80,000.
There are thousands of bins around the site painted by a dedicated team of volunteers who spend weeks on site individually painted a unique design on each one, in keeping with the theme for each stage or location.
For more stats visit the Glasto Thingy (external link). An independent website run by a massive fan of the festival.
How easy is it to buy tickets?
Firstly, you need to register your details on the Glastonbury Festival website (external link) to be eligible to purchase a ticket. This includes providing personal information and a passport-style photograph. Registration usually stay open until a week before tickets go on sale. Coach tickets are sold on a Thursday evening and general admission tickets the following Sunday. The sale takes place in early October or November.
When tickets are released, you'll need to be ready to purchase them online at the designated time. There's a limit of six tickets per transaction, and you'll need to pay the £75 deposit. If you are booking combined the combined coach and ticket on a Thursday sale, you’ll also need to pay the full coach fare from your chosen departure point. Payment can be made by debit card or credit card.
If you miss out on the general sale, you can try to purchase a resale ticket that takes place in April.
It is incredibly difficult to buy tickets with the festival rumoured to have demand 10x the available number of tickets. Most people work in groups of six on multiple devices to give themselves the best chance of success.
I have heard about Sunday tickets, what are these?
Sunday tickets are available to local residents and are available through a separate sale.
Is the line-up released before the tickets go on sale?
No, the tickets go on sale in October or November with the line-up poster for the main stages released in March each year. In 2015 the line-up was released as late as April.
Individual and smaller stages release their line-ups later, sometimes as late as May.
Part 2 what to take to Glastonbury
