The summer music festival season is in full swing, with live events happening all over the world featuring some of the biggest bands around. But, as you’ll be well aware, there’s no Glastonbury this year with the Worthy Farm festival having a fallow year, with the plan for it to return in 2027.

With the weather finally sorting itself out, have you thought about creating your own festival experience at home to fill the gap?

You and your friends can avoid the inevitable downpours, the massive queues at the bar, the pricy food, the late nights and the hassle of pitching a tent when you’d much rather be seeing live music.

I’ve picked out several products that can help transform your living room, bedroom or patio into a mini-festival site - and with the BBC currently showing highlights and a selection of live sets from the 2025 festival including The Prodigy’s blistering performance, alongside classic performances such as Radiohead from 1997 and The Cure from 2019 via the BBC iPlayer, it’s a great time to add some festival joy to the summer.

If you want a bit more inspiration when creating your Glastonbury at home experience, how about setting up a food and drink station, complete with bowls of snacks, plastic glasses and an ice bucket in the hall? You could even replace the bean bags I mentioned above with camping chairs - although it might now be quite as comfy.

Give your guests a running order for the day ahead - and plan in times for games of Hitster, giant jenga and food breaks for pizza delivery. You could even get some VIP lanyards printed, allowing "exclusive access" to your living room and fit some blackout curtains to create a night vibe for the whole day.

And if you think the noise might upset your neighbours, invite them round to join in!

Just what is it about Glastonbury? 55 years in and the world's most famous music festival continues to create headlines, crown new stars and produce those one-of-a-kind, you-had-to-be-there moments that get talked about for years after.

Michael Eavis' creation has survived all manner of changing trends, dramatic cultural shifts and the rise and fall of countless major music acts, evolving from more rock and folk-centred lineups to eventually embrace dance music, reggae, metal, country, hip hop and, despite the protestations of a few grumpy gatekeepers, pop.

2025's edition boasted a typically varied bill, everything from the experimental punk of Turnstile to the scabrous rap of Denzel Curry to the delirious trash-pop of Charli XCX and chaotic big beat of The Prodigy represented. Each year, the list of iconic Glasto performances only seems to get bigger. With the festival taking a well earned break this year, here are the 15 greatest Glastonbury sets of all time, so far.

The Smiths (1984)

More than a decade had passed since the birth of Glastonbury Festival, and the music scene that it represented in the early '70’s had moved on some way as we reached the mid-point of the 1980’s.

Not that these changes were particularly reflected in the line-up of the festival, with the 1984 bill featuring jazz legends Fela Kuti and Dr. John and new wave hero Elvis Costello headlining. But, halfway down the bill on the Saturday, Michael Eavis had booked a band that would give the festival the lightbulb moment it needed, leading to its refusal to stagnate ever again.

The Smiths only had one album at this point, their self-titled debut, released in February of that year, but already they were becoming cult-like, a magnet for frustrated and disaffected youth. No one quite knew what was going to happen when Morrissey and Johnny Marr led the Manchester quartet out that day, but their ten-song set seemed to be a siren for young people to appear from nowhere and turn the Pyramid Stage from a docile field of hippies into an pogoing indie disco.

By the time a triumphant Hand in Glove closed the show, a full-blown stage invasion was happening. The festival would never ignore the zeitgeist again.

Orbital (1994)

Glastonbury’s relationship with dance music wasn’t an immediately happy one. Michael Eavis has openly admitted he didn’t care for the style, and when a series of free parties started springing up on site around the time that the UK rave scene was being vilified as public enemy number one in the media, a sense of lawlessness that was the antithesis of Glastonbury’s purpose caused all manner of headaches.

But when the Criminal Justice Act bill of 1994 scandalously targeted and criminalised fans of acid house, the festival, rather than shun the genre, showed solidarity and embraced it.

Brothers Phil and Paul Hartnoll, aka Orbital, were installed as NME Stage headliners that year and proceeded to perform a set that has gone down as a kind of EDM big bang for festivals the world over.

Not only was the duo's hypnotic set of euphoric beats rapturously received, it showed that dance artists could compete with the traditional guitar band set up, opening the door for The Chemical Brothers, The Prodigy, Moby, Fatboy Slim and more to become an integral part of the festival's fabric.

Perhaps even more importantly though, the booking was a statement of political intent, one that defied the government's heavy-handed and discriminatory stance. It offered solid proof that the anti-establishment principles which gave birth to the festival were still alive and well.

Pulp (1995)

When The Stone Roses pulled out of their 1995 headline slot at the last-minute, after guitarist John Squire broke his collarbone and a shoulder blade falling off a mountain bike, Glastonbury was in urgent need of a replacement to close the Pyramid Stage on the festival's Saturday night.

On the face of it, Pulp, indie journeymen who had been plugging away for the past 15 years, and had only just begun to experience crossover success with their 1994 album His ‘n’ Hers, may have seemed like an underwhelming alternative to the mercurial Mancunians.

But the Sheffield band had a pretty huge ace up their sleeve, having just released what would become their definitive anthem; the arch pop of Common People. So big a hit was the song, that Glastonbury took a punt on the band as headliners, and Pulp repaid them with the performance of their career.

Suave, self-depreciating, charmingly geeky and yet blessed with the kind of charisma that you couldn’t take your eyes off, frontman Jarvis Cocker wonderfully conducted the crowd through his band's brilliantly odd, distinctly British, working class, guitar pop anthems. The reaction when the first notes of Common People’s disco throb begin, just after Cocker has read out his weekly shopping list by way of farewell, is spine-tingling stuff.

It elevated Pulp from cult favourites into one of the biggest bands in the country and turned Jarvis into a national treasure. One of the all-time great feel-good stories of the festival's history.

The Prodigy (1997)

Three days before The Fat Of The Land dropped and confirmed The Prodigy as one of the most significant and influential acts of the 90s, Essex's favourite firestarters rocked up to the Pyramid Stage to play one of the most explosive EDM sets ever seen at a major music festival. The first dance band to make the step up to Pyramid headliner, Liam, Keith, Maxim and their bandmates blew Glasto away with the kind of relentless, visceral energy usually more associated with the most confrontational punk and metal bands rather than anything out of the UK rave scene.

A break in the set owing to some equipment failure only heightened the sense of anticipation around the crowd when the band finally made it back onstage. By that point, Glastonbury was already an absolute mudbath, days of heavy rain in the lead up to the festival turning it into a bog as soon as punters stepped within its boundaries.

It didn't matter; The Prodigy had seas of people bouncing, moshing and dancing like maniacs, newer cuts like Smack My Bitch Up, Breathe and number one smash hit Firestarter establishing themselves not just as career-high bangers, but some of the heaviest, most essential anthems of their era. Incredibly, this incendiary set was arguably not even the most iconic Glastonbury performance of that year...

Radiohead (1997)

By 1997, BritPop had been a national obsession for a few years, and that summer's Glastonbury line-up reflected that. But, although no one knew it at the time, the rug was very much about to be pulled out from underneath the movement.

Two weeks before the festival took place, Radiohead released their third album Ok Computer. Installed as Pyramid Stage headliners on the festival's Saturday night, the Oxfordshire band put on a performance that was so good it arguably contributed to changing the entire landscape of popular music in Britain.

Rather than coming out with a bang in an attempt to immediately grab attention, Radiohead teased out the opening of their set with the slow, delicate Lucky. It seemed a risk to start a first ever festival headlining set with a song placed as track 11 on an album that came out just 12 days earlier, but it immediately marked Radiohead out as the antithesis of the zeitgeist.

From there the Glastonbury audience was held rapt, becoming hypnotised by the band ran through a set of songs that sounded completely unique, utterly advanced and totally alien. Take a look at Thom Yorke wailing along, his body flinching and juddering, trying to keep in rhythm with his band as Johnny Greenwood’s iconic solo during Paranoid Android rips out of the Pyramid Stage PA, it’s a truly transcendent moment.

Unquestionably one of the greatest sets in the history of live music, raising the bar to near impossible standards.

David Bowie (2000)

Michael Eavis once described David Bowie as one of the three greatest singers of all time, alongside Elvis and Frank Sinatra, and Bowie hadn’t rocked up at Worthy Farm since its second iteration back in 1971, so this one was always going to be a bit special.

Let's be honest, there is a more than a touch of revisionism when discussing Bowie these days; during the late '80s and into the '90s he wasn’t being lauded as a forward-thinking visionary in quite the same way as he is now, with albums from that period like Earthling and Black Tie, White Noise getting a lukewarm reaction upon their release. This performance, though, did as much as anything to re-cement Bowie’s place at the very pinnacle of popular culture, as he ran through a greatest hits set that reminded the entire world of his undoubted genius. Also, the warmth with which the veteran performer later spoke about his experiences at the festival was evidence of just how hallowed even the biggest artists considered this site to be.

Watching the set back today, the mass sing-along during Heroes, Life on Mars or Under Pressure are positively life affirming, but don’t ignore Bowie ending his set on a fantastic version of I’m Afraid of Americans, a nod to his thirst to remain relevant and never sink into the nostalgia quagmire.

Amy Winehouse (2007)

Everyone in the music industry knew that Amy Winehouse was a talent long before this performance blew her stratospheric. But Glastonbury 2007 is the moment where everyone could see that Winehouse was more than just a gifted, enigmatic vocalist; she was a true one-off, destined to be one of the finest artists that Britain has ever produced.

Less than a year earlier, her second album Back To Black had received plaudits from pretty much every corner of the music world, but as she stepped onto the Pyramid Stage for her early afternoon slot on the festival's Friday, it felt like everything that made her so special became amplified for the entire world to see.

There’s just something so brilliantly unique about Winehouse here; slim, petite but lacking the airs and graces of a typical diva singer, she wipes the mud from her shoes on her backing curtain, before shuffling on and effortlessly belting out opening track Addicted. From there on in, it’s a greatest hits set with a few covers - Sam Cooke’s Cupid, The Specials Hey Little Rich Girl and Toots & The Maytals Monkey Man - thrown in for good measure. Great as they are, though, nothing really can compete with the awe-inspiring performances of You Know I’m No Good and Rehab, the pure soul and pain that glides so effortlessly from her mouth showing an artist at the peak of her powers.

As enigmatic as any artist on this list, Winehouse only ever performed at Glastonbury once more after this. At this point she’d doubtless have been a headliner, making her 2007 peak even more of a bittersweet pill to swallow.

Jay-Z (2008)

When Oasis’ Noel Gallagher scoffed that “Glastonbury has the tradition of guitar music...I’m not having hip-hop at Glastonbury, it's wrong,” after it was announced that Jay-Z was to headline the Pyramid Stage in 2008, he might have been speaking as an out-of-touch, grumpy, old curmudgeon, but he wasn’t alone in his thinking.

Even back in 2008 the internet loved a pile on, and the purists' ire was keenly felt, with many traditionalists happily jumping onboard the outrage train. How dare Jay-Z take a place on the bill usually reserved for legendary artists such as... er...Travis and Stereophonics...? Seems silly now, doesn’t it? Because those words could not have been more emphatically rammed down the throats of the detractors, as the New York rapper provided one of the all-time iconic Glastonbury moments by walking out to one of the biggest crowds seen in years, guitar in tow, and began to giggle his way through a sarcasm-laced cover of Wonderwall, before launching into an awe-inspiring mash up of 99 Problems and AC/DC’s Back In Black. As intros go, it might just be the best ever.

From there on in Jay couldn’t fail, drawing on one of the most bullet-proof, hit-filled catalogues in modern music, and chucking in snippets of The Prodigy’s Smack My Bitch Up and Amy Winehouse’s Rehab just hammered home the win.

This killer set opened the door for Kanye West, Beyonce, Stormzy, Dave and others to storm the festival in later years, and make anyone who ever questioned hip-hop's place at Glastonbury again look exceedingly daft, at best.

Metallica (2014)

Save for the odd booking of alt-metal here and there over the years, Glastonbury had never truly embraced heavy metal. Which, considering the festival's reputation as the most musically eclectic on the planet, was quite the source of frustration for some metal fans. It was a huge shock, then, to see Michael and Emily Eavis go from 0 to 100 and book the biggest metal band of all time to close the Pyramid Stage in 2014.

Confusingly, this prospect caused almost as much of a stir as Jay-Z's six years prior, with endless indie no-marks and the same exhausting online commentators lining up to question the booking: as if that were not enough, an anti-hunting group of festival goers created a petition to have them removed due to James Hetfield’s extra-curricular activities. Metallica, as usual, won the day though, mocking the controversy in their set-opening video and playing a set of hard rock and thrash metal that won over even the most sceptical attendee.

In the aftermath Glastonbury would invite Motörhead to perform, and give Earache Records a stage to curate, which saw the likes of Gojira, Napalm Death, Entombed, Venom Prison and Employed To Serve added to the bill. Hard to imagine that would have happened without Metallica kicking the door down.

Dolly Parton (2014)

The day after Metallica laid waste to the Pyramid Stage a very different, but no less exciting, event took place. The long-established Sunday afternoon legends slot on the Pyramid Stage had boasted some great sets by some huge artists, with Tom Jones, Paul Simon, Neil Diamond, Dame Shirley Bassey and more overseeing mass singalongs over the years. But few, if any, pulled such a crowd, or put on such a heartwarming, good-time, fun-filled set, as country legend Dolly Parton did in 2014.

The consummate entertainer, Dolly knew exactly what was required to make the slot work, and with the gargantuan crowd eating from the palm of her hand, she turned a muddy field in Somerset into a Nashville hoedown in the most effortless way. The fact that she could just casually chuck Joelene out as the third song of the set says it all.

Some artists truly do transcend genre, and Parton is one of music's all-time great characters and songwriters. In terms of matching the energy, and reciprocal devotion garnered by that set, only Kylie Minogue’s emotional and long-awaited performance in 2019 could match an hour of Dolly at her best. It was impossible not to raise a smile.

Florence And The Machine (2015)

In 2015, Foo Fighters were due to return to Glastonbury for the first time since 1997, to headline the Pyramid Stage. Then just weeks before the show, Dave Grohl broke his leg falling onstage at a stadium show in Sweden and their entire summer tour was cancelled. Just like 20 years earlier, Glastonbury suddenly needed a new headliner, and just like 20 years previously, the artist that stepped in gave the performance of their career.

Florence And The Machine were already a sizeable outfit, having picked up a BRIT award for their 2009 debut album Lungs, but the jump from well-known, indie rock band to Glastonbury headliner is a chasm. And Florence made the jump with impressive ease, drawing from the best of all three of her albums, and throwing in a beautifully poignant cover of The Foos' Times Like These as a nod to her fallen peers, with Dave Grohl later describing her version as being “better than Foo Fighters had ever played it.” By the time the victory lap of You’ve Got the Love and Dog Days are Over came around, Florence had established herself as an all-time festival headlining act.

Stormzy (2019)

When Stormzy stepped out onto the Pyramid Stage to headline the Friday night of the 2019 festival he was 25-years-old, had one album to his name and was the first grime artist to do so. These events alone have to make his set one of the most astonishing achievements in Glastonbury’s history, but the fact that he made it such a spectacle, such a wonderful celebration of the best of black and alternative British culture and such an emotionally moving experience, cements its place amongst the all-time greats.

Beginning with a video of Jay-Z giving him advice about what to expect from the festival, which was a lovely little call-back, Stormzy walked out in a Banksy-designed, Union Jack stab vest, railed against the Tory government, then brought out members of the Black Ballet company, a full gospel choir, fellow UK grime artists Dave and Fredo and... er... Coldplay’s Chris Martin. In the process, he crowned grime as the definitive British youth culture movement of the modern era.

From an underground musical style from the streets of South London to closing the biggest music festival on Earth, Stormzy’s place at the top of the bill at Glastonbury should give hope to every young musician that the summit can be reached, no matter how stacked the odds are against you.

Foo Fighters (2023)

It might just have been the worst-kept secret in Glasto history. Within days of a mysterious band called 'The Churnups' being added to the Pyramid Stage lineup for 2023's edition, Dave Grohl posted an open letter to Foo Fighters fans that seemingly gave the game away. "Every night, when I see you singing, it makes me sing harder," he said. "When I see you screaming, It makes me scream louder. When I see your tears, it brings me to tears. And when I see your joy, it brings me joy. But, I see you... and it feels good to see you, churning-up these emotions together."

Churning-up emotions? It can't have been a coincidence. And it wasn't: around tea time on the Friday afternoon of Glastonbury 2023, Foo Fighters did indeed stroll out on stage to an ecstatic response from a huge, expectant crowd, launching into a nine-song, banger-filled set to send Worthy Farm bouncing.

It was the Foos' first appearance at Glasto since the death of Taylor Hawkins the year prior, making Dave's emotional dedication of Everlong to his drummer and dear friend all the more poignant. A relatively short set, all things considered, but it might just have been Foos' most impactful festival performance on these shores.

Elton John (2023)

There was no doubting that Elton John's final UK festival show was going to be something special, but it surely exceeded even the most optimistic of expectations. A sparkling, emotional, hits-stacked set that helped draw the curtain on Elton's touring career in style, an incredible two-hour showing broke records and set a new standard for legacy acts on the Pyramid Stage.

Not only did the set draw the biggest ever viewing figures for the BBC's Glasto coverage - peaking at 7.6 million views - but it drew the biggest live crowd the Pyramid had ever seen, a humungous, singing, swaying, dancing, flare-waving army that looked like something out of a particularly fabulous Lord Of The Rings scene. After intense rumours of appearances from Dua Lipa and Britney Spears, Elton instead largely used his time to spotlight younger artists in the form of Jacob Lusk, Stephen Sanchez and Rina Sawayama - a classy act that spoke volumes of the Rocket Man's passion for great music above all else.

From an inevitable but emotional tribute to George Michael to the welcome surprise inclusions of Pinball Wizard and Are You Ready For Love, it was a near-flawless waltz with one of the UK's very greatest songwriters. "This may be my last show ever in England and Great Britain, so I better play well and I better entertain you," a visibly moved Elton remarked at one point. That he certainly did. We may never see a Glastonbury set with quite this level of spectacle and gravitas again.

Turnstile (2025)

Hardcore punk is hardly the first genre you'd associate with Glastonbury, but then Turnstile are quite unlike any band to have ever emerged from the hardcore scene. Many would argue that Baltimore's finest had long outgrown their roots by the time they graced the Other Stage at Worthy Farm; the fizzing, technicolour shine of both 2021's Glow On and last year's Never Enough took as much influence from MGMT and The 1975 as Bad Brains or Trapped Under Ice.

And yet, their live shows remain some of the most chaotic and relentless in all of modern rock music - hell, frontman Brandon Yates became the first musician to stage dive at a Tiny Desk Concert - meaning that, as the mid-afternoon sun baked Glasto nicely on the final day of 2025's edition, it felt like something special could be about to happen.

And special it was. From the second the band skipped out on stage and the shimmering opening notes of Never Enough's title track gave way to that fat, grungy riff, Glastonbury became a city of moshing, bouncing, dancing, crowdsurfing bodies and never let up. What followed was, quite simply, one of the most energetic, electric sets to have hit the festival in recent memory, a welcome reminder that rock music is indeed alive and thriving and that it can still have a home at the world's biggest music festival.

For every Olivia Rodrigo, The 1975 and Neil Young at Glastonbury Festival, there's countless smaller, far more weird and wonderful acts that deserve just as much of your attention. So for those who didn't quite manage to land the hottest ticket of the summer to check out these artists for yourselves, from psychedelic Zamrock legends to magical Cornish singer-songwriters, here's five of our favourites who performed this year.

Glass Beams - West Holts Stage, Friday 14:30pm

A mirage in the desert, Glass Beams’ fluid and floaty psychedelia washes over the Glastonbury’s West Holts audience like a (mostly) restorative tonic. As the sun scorches down, Eastern guitar licks snake through tantric drum rhythms, chimes and bells adding a meditative dimension before electronic touches enlarge their sonic kaleidoscope with extra hypnotic - and even sometimes - disorientating hues. The Indian-Australian Rajan Silva-led groove-conjurers also make quite the confounding sight, hidden under ornate gold bejewelled masks. Are they apparitions bubbled up from our heat-fuddled minds? We’re not sure, but either way they’re a transfixing watch. Sparkling, spiritual, and very Glastonbury.

Osees - The Park Stage, Friday 18:00pm

Wielding his guitar like a gun hoisted all the way up his neck, Osees frontman John Dwyer looks like he’s firing shots at the audience beneath, soundtracking his assault with an armful of garage rock grooves, choppy desert rock and heavy psych. Centre stage, the band’s two drummers lay down a bulky, thunderous backbone, supercharging each track with a boisterous energy. When crowd surfers begin to fly and moshes break out, Dwyer grows increasingly dishevelled, grabbing his guitar by his teeth and shoving the microphone into his mouth. A truly chaotic performance, despite the meagre amount of people watching.

Daisy Rickman - Treestage, Thursday 12:50pm

There seems no better setting for Cornish psych folk artist Daisy Rickman to perform this weekend. Sat in front of a tall oak totem on the Tree Stage with band mate Isaac I Ockenden - which was fittingly built to ‘blur the boundary between nature, sound, and self” - the rustically-dressed pair look as though they’ve stepped straight out of folklore. As the wind blows Rickman’s ocean-waved hair, she howls in unison against a soul-soothing drone, brushing her guitar softly and lightly shaking bells. The effect is breathtaking; each song flowing like the tide, bare-boned and deeply enchanting, a score that seems purpose-made for the sacred landscapes of their Cornish homeland.

Goat - West Holts Stage, Sunday 17:00pm

The mysterious masked warriors from the supposedly "cursed" Swedish village of Korpilombolo are a perfect booking for Glastonbury; colourful, whimsical and a little bit freaky. As they sport carnivalesque masks, headdresses, kaftan robes and flowing clothing, viewers watch on, wobbling their bodies like jelly to rolling tribal beats and filthy wah-wah thrusts. Meanwhile, the two front-women leap and skip around the stage, convulsing their bodies to the rhythm with shakers in hand, grinding over the cameras to the booty-jiggling Goatbrain, the free-spirited 60s psychedelia and fuzzy stoner rock of Goatfuzz and the gyrating hip-hop of Nimerudi, joined by the track's guest rapper, MC Yallah for an electric live collab.

WITCH (We Intend To Cause Havoc) - Greenpeace Stage, Friday 15:15pm

Wah-wah pedal galore! Zambian cult psych-mavens performed twice across the weekend, this writer catching them for their second performance at the Greenpeace stage. Despite their legendary status as pioneers of Zamrock, WITCH's afternoon slot pulled only a small audience, yet those in attendance were undoubtedly enlivened by the band's mix of tumbling African rhythms, Jimi Hendrix-style vocals and bluesy guitar licks, as they danced and moved their bodies under the blinding sun.

This year's Glastonbury Festival has opened its gates and is now in full swing with a whole weekend of amazing music to dive into.

I didn't manage to get my hands on a ticket, so I'll be watching the weekend unfold from the comfort of my sofa, armed with a supply of cold drinks and snacks. With that in mind, I've spend the last few days planning out my viewing schedule so I don’t miss anything.

And while there’s uncertainty around whether certain artists will be broadcast across the BBC’s channels and on iPlayer such as Neil Young, Turnstile and Deftones, there’s still more than enough music to get excited about when it comes to confirmed broadcast slots.

And before we go any further, don't forget to check out Louder's how to watch Glastonbury 2025 page which has line-ups, playlists, weather forecasts, the Louder team's highlights and more.

Use the Glastonbury app

The first thing I did was download the official Glastonbury app which is available to download via Apple iOS or Android. While the app is primarily aimed at those attending Glastonbury 2025, the line-up tab at the bottom of the screen is not only a great way of seeing who’s playing where and when, but you can add artists to your own personal line-up schedule with a simple click.

While all the Glastonbury stages are included in the app, I’ve been concentrating on the five main stages that the BBC are focusing on: Pyramid Stage, Other Stage, West Holts, Woodsies and The Park Stage.

I now have a neat schedule containing easy to read stages, dates, times and set durations so I can see at a glance what to watch next. It certainly beats making a list on my phone or on a scrap of paper, plus I can easily spot any overlaps in set times.

What bands are the BBC covering?

With so much music going on across the whole of the Worthy Farm site, some artists sadly won’t be broadcast. However, the BBC have confirmed many artists whose sets will either be broadcast live or through highlight packages as the weekend goes on. Confirmed artists include:

Friday
English Teacher, Wet Leg, Supergrass, Franz Ferdinand, Biffy Clyro, Alanis Morissette and The 1975.

Saturday
Weezer, Good Neighbours, John Fogerty, Gary Numan, Amyl And The Sniffers, Beth Gibbons and the mystery band “Patchwork”.

Sunday
Nile Rogers & CHIC, The Libertines, Rod Stewart and Wolf Alice.

With coverage across the five main stages, there’s bound to be more surprises in store.

BBC Sounds

Even if you're not able to watch all the Glastonbury action, don't forget that the BBC Sounds app is also covering a whole heap of content right now and throughout the big weekend.

Radio 6 Music is completely dedicated to all things Glastonbury, while Radio One and Radio Two have featured Glasto slots to tune into.

Not only are the BBC providing audio coverage of live sets and round-ups, they also have episodes dedicated to classic Glastonbury performances which include Fontaines D.C., Garbage, Iggy And The Stooges, David Bowie and more.

You can download the BBC Sounds app on Apple Music and on Google Play.

How to watch Glastonbury 2025 in the UK

• UK coverage - free on BBC iPlayer

How to watch Glastonbury 2025 outside the UK

• Watch from anywhere outside the UK: Nord VPN for only $3.09 per month

With so much going on around the festival, there's a good chance you might miss some of it if you're on holiday. In that case, you can use a VPN service such as NordVPN, our current top pick, instead, so you can still get your Glastonbury fix.

It’s not a difficult process and you can get up and running in minutes – and right now it's available at a great price and with a 30-day money-back guarantee. There's also 72% off the regular price and you can get an Amazon gift card if you sign up to one of Nord's two-year packages.

How to use a VPN

1. Install a VPN. As we've mentioned above, Nord VPN is Louder's favourite.

2. Choose the location you wish to connect to in the VPN. If you're currently outside the UK on holiday and want to watch the BBC's Glastonbury's coverage, just select 'UK' from the list.

3. Turn the volume up and relax. Sign in to your iPlayer account and you're all set to watch the weekend's action from around the festival site.

Read more

• How to watch The 1975 live at Glastonbury 2025
• 12 alternative acts you should try and watch at Glastonbury 2025
• The 16 greatest Glastonbury Festival performances ever
• The 10 best performances of Glastonbury 2023
• How Glastonbury finally embraced metal
• I'm a Glastonbury Festival veteran of over 20 years - here are 5 things I never go to Worthy Farm without

With their first ever Glastonbury headlining set, The 1975 hit the Pyramid Stage on this year's Friday night for a performance Louder called their "crowning moment of glory."

It was the third time the band have played Glastonbury, and the first time since 2016 when they took to The Other Stage. For UK viewers, you'll be able to rewatch their set from the comfort of your living room via the BBC's iPlayer for the next month. If you happen to be out of the country during that time, don't worry because you can still catch their first headline set at Glasto using a VPN.

How to rewatch The 1975 at Glastonbury in the UK

• Rewatch via the BBC iPlayer Glastonbury hub

The 1975 hit the Pyramid Stage at 22:15 BST for an hour and a half long performance. For those watching from the UK with a TV licence, you can rewatch the whole set on the BBC iPlayer and it'll be available for the next month.

If you happen to be on holiday over that period and still want to catch the show, you can still use a VPN to watch it live. Check out our how to use a VPN section for more info.

How to rewatch from anywhere

• Rewatch Glastobury via Nord VPN and save 72%

If you're going to be outside the UK over the next month and don't want to miss out on rewatching The 1975's Pyramid Stage headline set, don't worry, you can still get in on the action with a VPN.

A VPN, or Virtual Private Network to give it's proper name, obscures the location of your IP address, telling the website you're visiting that your computer is actually in the UK and not somewhere abroad. Our VPN of choice is NordVPN, and to sweeten the deal for you it's currently available with 72% off the usual price - and there's a 30-day money back guarantee.

How to use a VPN

1. Install your VPN. As we've mentioned above, Nord VPN is Louder's favourite.

2. Choose the location you wish to connect to in the VPN. If you're going to be outside the UK on holiday over the course of the next month and want to rewatch The 1975's set, just select 'UK' from the list.

3. Turn the volume up and relax. You're all set to rewatch The 1975's 90-minute set from Glastonbury.

Setlist

The 1975, Glastonbury: June 27, 2005
1. Happiness
2. If You’re Too Shy (Let Me Know)
3. Love Me
4. She’s American
5. Part of the Band
6. Chocolate
7. Paris
8. Robbers
9. Somebody Else
10. fallingforyou
11. People
12. Be My Mistake
13. It’s Not Living (If It’s Not With You)
14. I Couldn’t Be More in Love
15. I Always Wanna Die (Sometimes)
16. Love It If We Made It
17. Sex
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Had The 1975 played Glastonbury before?

This year was the third time The 1975 played Glastonbury, but it was the first time they've headlined the famous Pyramid Stage.

Before 2025, the last time The 1975 played Glasto was way back in 2016, when they shared The Other Half Stage alongside New Order and Chvrches. They'd previously played Glastonbury in 2014, not long after the release of their debut self-titled album.

The 1975's 2025 plans

It's been widely reported that the Glastonbury headliner would be The 1975's only live performance of 2025.

News of a new studio album has emerged in recent months, but there's no date yet on when it will be completed, and the band's manager reported that they are taking their time with it. We can't imagine it will be released this year, but hopefully we'll get some new music from the band next year, as well as an even bigger tour to support it.

The 1975's most recent studio album was 2022's Being Funny in a Foreign Language.

Who else played Glastonbury?

PYRAMID STAGE: FRIDAY, JUNE 27
The 1975: 22:15 - 23:45
Biffy Clyro: 20:15 - 21:15
Alanis Morissette: 18:15 - 19:15
TBA: 16:55 - 17:30
Burning Spear: 15:00 - 16:00
CMAT: 13:30 - 14:30
Supergrass: 12:00 - 13:00

PYRAMID STAGE: SATURDAY, JUNE 28
Neil Young & The Chrome Hearts: 22:00 - 23:45
Raye: 20:00 - 21:00
Patchwork: 18:15 - 19:15
John Fogerty: 16:30 - 17:30
The Script: 15:00 - 16:00
Brandi Carlile: 13:30 - 14:30
Kaiser Chiefs: 12:00 - 13:00

PYRAMID STAGE: SUNDAY, JUNE 29
Olivia Rodrigo: 21:45 - 23:15
Noah Kahan: 19:45 - 20:45
Nile Rogers & Chic: 18:00 - 19:00
Rod Stewart: 15:45 - 17:15
The Libertines: 14:00 - 15:00
Celeste: 12:30 - 13:30
The Selecter: 11:15 - 12:00

OTHER STAGE: FRIDAY, JUNE 27
Loyle Carner: 22:30 - 23:45
Busta Rhymes: 20:30 - 21:30
Gracie Abrams: 18:45 - 19:45
Franz Ferdinand: 17:15 - 18:15
Wet Leg: 15:45 - 16:45
Inhaler: 14:15 - 15:15
Rizzle Kicks: 13:00 - 13:45
Fabio & Grooverider & The Outlook Orchestra: 11:30 - 12:30

OTHER STAGE: SATURDAY, JUNE 28
Charli XCX: 22:30 - 23:45
Deftones: 20:30 - 21:30
Ezra Collective: 18:45 - 19:45
Amyl & The Sniffers: 17:00 - 18:00
Weezer: 15:30 - 16:30
Beabadoobee: 14:00 - 15:00
Good Neighbours: 12:45 - 13:30
Alessi Rose: 11:30 - 12:15

OTHER STAGE: SUNDAY, JUNE 29
The Prodigy: 21:45 - 23:15
Wolf Alice: 19:45 - 20:45
Snow Patrol: 18:00 - 19:00
Turnstile: 16:30 - 17:30
Joy Crookes: 15:00 - 15:45
Shaboozey: 13:45 - 14:30
Nadine Shah: 12:30 - 13:15
Louis Dunford: 11:15 - 12:00

WEST HOLTS STAGE: FRIDAY, JUNE 27
Maribou State: 22:15 - 23:45
Badbadnotgood: 20:30 - 21:30
Denzel Curry: 19:00 - 20:00
En Vogue: 17:30 - 18:30
Vieux Farka Toure: 16:00 - 17:00
Glass Beams: 14:30 - 15:25
Ca7riel & Paco Amoroso: 13:00 - 14:00
Corto.Alto: 11:30 - 12:30

WEST HOLTS STAGE: SATURDAY, JUNE 28
Doechii: 22:15 - 23:45
Amaarae: 20:30 - 21:30
Greentea Peng: 19:00 - 20:00
Yussef Dayes: 17:30 - 18:30
Kneecap: 16:00 - 17:00
Bob Vylan: 14:30 - 15:30
Nilüfer Yanya: 13:00 - 14:00
Infinity Song: 11:30 - 12:30

WEST HOLTS STAGE: SUNDAY, JUNE 29
Overmono: 21:45 - 23:15
Parcels: 20:00 - 21:00
The Brian Jonestown Massacre: 18:30 - 19:30
Goat: 17:00 - 18:00
Black Uhuru: 15:30 - 16:30
Cymande: 14:00 - 15:00
Abel Selaocoe & The Bantu Ensemble: 12:30 - 13:30
Thandii: 11:00 - 12:00

WOODSIES: FRIDAY, JUNE 27
Four Tet: 22:30 - 23:45
Floating Points: 21:00 - 22:00
Pinkpantheress: 19:30 - 20:30
Blossoms: 18:00 - 19:00
Lola Young: 16:30 - 17:30
Shed Seven: 15:15 - 16:00
Fat Dog: 14:00 - 14:45
Myles Smith: 12:45 - 13:30
TBA: 11:30 - 12:15

WOODSIES: SATURDAY, JUNE 28
Scissor Sisters: 22:30 - 23:45
Tom Odell: 21:00 - 22:00
Father John Misty: 19:30 - 20:30
TV On The Radio: 18:00 - 19:00
Nova Twins: 16:30 - 17:30
Jade: 15:15 - 16:00
Fcukers: 14:00 - 14:45
Sorry: 12:45 - 13:30
The Amazons: 11:30 - 12:15

WOODSIES: SUNDAY, JUNE 29
Jorja Smith: 21:30 - 22:45
AJ Tracey: 20:00 - 21:00
St. Vincent: 18:30 - 19:30
Black Country, New Road: 17:00 - 18:00
Djo: 15:30 - 16:30
Sprints: 14:00 - 15:00
Gurriers: 12:30 - 13:30
Westside Cowboy: 11:15 - 12:00

THE PARK STAGE: FRIDAY, JUNE 27
Anohni And The Johnsons: 23:00 - 00:15
Self Esteem: 21:15 - 22:15
Wunderhorse: 19:30 - 20:30
Osees: 18:00 - 19:00
English Teacher: 16:30 - 17:30
Faye Webster: 15:15 - 16:00
Jalen Ngonda: 14:00 - 14:45
John Glacier: 12:45 - 13:30
Horsegirl: 10:30 - 12:10

THE PARK STAGE: SATURDAY, JUNE 28
Caribou: 23:00 - 00:15
Beth Gibbons: 21:15 - 22:15
TBA: 19:30 - 22:30
Gary Numan: 18:00 - 19:00
Pa Salieu: 16:45 - 17:30
Lucy Dacus: 15:30 - 16:15
Japanese Breakfast: 14:00 - 15:00
Ichiko Aoba: 12:45 - 13:30
Yann Tiersen: 11:10 - 12:10

THE PARK STAGE: SUNDAY, JUNE 29
The Maccabees: 21:15 - 22:30
Future Islands: 19:35 - 20:35
Kae Tempest: 18:00 - 19:00
Girl In Red: 16:30 - 17:30
Royel Otis: 15:15 - 16:00
Katy J Pearson: 14:00 - 14:45
Geordie Greep: 12:45 - 13:30
Melin Melyn: 11:30 - 12:15

Visit the official Glastonbury website for a full list of artists.

Read more

• 12 alternative acts you should try and watch at Glastonbury 2025
• The 16 greatest Glastonbury Festival performances ever
• The 10 best performances of Glastonbury 2023
• How Glastonbury finally embraced metal
• I'm a Glastonbury Festival veteran of over 20 years - here are 5 things I never go to Worthy Farm without

When the full line-up for this weekend's Glastonbury festival was announced at the start of the month, it didn't take long for eagle-eyed music fans to spot that a previously unknown artist named Patchwork had a suspiciously high profile slot on the site's Pyramid Stage on the evening of Saturday, June 28, playing at 6:15pm, after former Creedence Clearwater Revival frontman John Fogerty and before south London R&B superstar Raye.

It's not unusual for the festival to host artists who keep their true identity hidden until the 11th hour - just two years ago the fact that Foo Fighters would be playing the festival billed as The Churnups was the world's worst-kept secret - but with festival-goers already pitching their tents on Worthy Farm, the fact that no-one has yet officially cracked the identity of this year's biggest mystery guess is causing all manner of feverish guesswork.

In recent weeks, the smart money was being placed on Patchwork being revealed as either Pulp, or Haim.

Jarvis Cocker's Btitpop misfits are a true band of the people, Glastonbury legends thanks to their 1995 headline performance, and their recent return with More, their first new album in 24 years has been rapturously received. Given that the band had a six-date arena tour booked for June this year, it would make sense that they wouldn't wish to hurt their own ticket sales by simultaneously announcing their presence on this year's Glasto bill, plus they have previous form when it comes to secret shows, having made a 'surprise' appearance on the festival's Park stage back in 2011.

However, members of the band have sought to quash the rumours in recent weeks, with keyboard player Candida Doyle telling BBC 6 Music that the Sheffield group "wanted to" to play, but but that festival bookers "weren’t interested". Jarvis Cocker, meanwhile, has stated that the band would only be at Glastonbury this weekend in a "life or death situation".

The case for Haim playing seemed more logical, to some. Online sleuths discovered that there's a book titled Patchwork written by one Susan Haim, and concluded that this must mean that the mystery band are Este, Danielle, and Alana Haim. The LA band released a new album, I Quit, last week, and they're booked to play a one-off British show at Dreamland Margate on Friday, June 27, meaning that they would, theoretically, be free on the 28th. Speaking to Radio 2 DJ Jo Whiley recently, the sisters admitted that they would be "in the area" this weekend, but then expressed their love for the festival's Park Stage..,. which happens to have a TBA slot on Saturday night too.

Hmmmm...

The waters have also been muddied this week by a cryptic online post by US pop super star Chappell Roan.

The star has already performed at a number of European festivals this summer, but has a gap in her touring schedule this coming weekend. So when the Missouri-born star posted a throwback photograph of herself as a child holding a patchwork blanket, the internet had a mini-meltdown, as the internet does. Some observers also pointed out that the singer wore a patchwork suit at this year's Met Gala.

The plot thickens.

Dave Grohl's presence in the UK has also muddied the waters. The Foo Fighters frontman made a surprise appearance onstage with his old friend Kim Deal in London last week to perform Pixies classic Gigantic, leading to speculation as to whether a return to Glastonbury might also be on the cards. Given that the Foos recently sacked drummer Josh Freese, debuting a new line-up at Worthy Farm would be a bold move, but what if Patchwork is a coded reference for a (partial) Nirvana reformation, or indeed for a one-off 'patched together' rock supergroup? Has anyone checked on the whereabouts of Josh Homme, Brian May and Lars Ulrich?

Other names have been mentioned in regards to Patchwork. Lewis Capaldi. Mumford and Sons. Oasis. Robbie Williams. Dying Fetus. Okay, that last one is a lie, but forgive us, our heads are spinning at this point...

Frankly, Saturday evening can't come soon enough.

And if you can't be at Glastonbury this weekend, here's how you can watch all the excitement unfold from the comfort of your own home.

I went to my first Glastonbury in 2003. Well, technically I went to my first in 1990, when I was three, dragged around Worthy Farm by my parents, a couple of Glasto OGs. It was in '03, however, that I went as a fully-conscious music fan, and it was an experience I'll never forget. Killer lineup (R.E.M., Radiohead and Moby headlining the Pyramid!), lovely weather and all The Vibes - a foundational few days in the journey of 16 year old me.

Since then I've been to no fewer than eleven more Glastos, and have experienced everything from maddening heatwaves (I think my skin is still peeling from 2019) to those infamous mudbaths (2004 and 2016 haunt me). Over that time, I've amassed a bulletproof battle plan of the bare essentials I need with me to make sure I'm covered for all eventualities. Heading to Glasto this year? Here are five things you'll wanna be bringing.

Good, comfortable footwear

You'd be amazed how many times I've been to Glasto with people that have decided to bust out a fresh pair of Converse, wear in brand new Docs or even pack a pair of high heels (yes, really). Whatever your plans are for this year's festival, I can promise you this: you'll be doing a lot of walking. Wanting to see bands on more than one stage? Big walk. Need to check out a specific area? Big ol' walk. Gonna do nothing but sit in your tent all weekend? Biiiiiiig walk before you can even find a spot to pitch it. If you're reading this right now and don't have any good, durable footwear, buy some right now and wear them in in the lead-up.

Bin liners

"Love the farm, leave no trace" has been a Glasto mantra for decades, so don't be a dickhead: bring some bin liners and make sure you're cleaning up after yourself. It's not just an easy way to help keep the festival a bit tidier: it'll stop your tent becoming an absolute mess of bottles, cans, wrappers and empty food packets. Pro tip: bin liners can also double up as something to chuck your muddy/dusty boots in to stop your belongings getting all messed up. They can triple up as a real fashion statement if you run out of clothes, too.

Wet wipes

Maybe the most sacred item of all: be it scrubbing off the mud and muck that inevitably finds its way across your body at the tiniest sniff of rain, wiping away suncream and sweat after a long day in the sun or just cleaning up after a cheeky, late night tent snack binge, wet wipes have got your back. They're also an essential shower substitute if you're someone who can't be bothered with walking across site and queuing for hours for the real thing. Oh, and if you forget to bring loo roll (don't forget loo roll!!!), they'll have your back for that too. Or should that be crack?

A decent power bank

Glastonbury has massively improved its access to charging stations, battery swaps and other power-up initiatives in recent years, but you'll still end up queueing for ages or having to go without a phone for a few hours if you don't plan accordingly. So find a decent, portable power bank or two that you can bring with you around site or use to charge up while you're asleep.

Warm clothes

As I write this, it looks like Glasto 2025 might be graced by the tail end of a heatwave. Brilliant! Swimmies and flip flops for all! Except even in Glastonbury's hottest years, you are still ultimately in the middle of the countryside, and it gets bloody nippy in the early hours. Don't make the same mistake I did in 2022 and accidentally leave your big, comfy, warm jumper at home (but if you do, I'd recommend going to the on-site Oxfam store where I managed to pick up a nice, fleecy hoodie after spending a night freezing my baps off).

Glastonbury Festival 2025 takes place next week, June 25-29, at Worthy Farm in Pilton.

* If you missed out on a ticket, you can still catch live sets and more across the five main stages through the BBC's iPlayer. Here's how you can watch Glastonbury 2025 from anywhere. Our hub page has line-ups, stage times, weather forecasts, app details and a section on using a VPN.

Glastonbury Festival has unveiled its lineup for 2025, and it's looking like another stacked bill that's set to take over Worthy Farm this June. Joining previously announced headliner Neil Young and Sunday Legend Rod Stewart are Pyramid Stage headliners the 1975 and Olivia Rodrigo, plus a wealth of rock artists including Biffy Clyro, Deftones, Weezer, Amyl And The Sniffers, Bob Vylan, The Libertines, Wet Leg, Nova Twins, St Vincent and Turnstile.

Pop is well represented with Charli XCX, Raye, Nile Rogers and Chic and Jade announced so far, while The Prodigy, Leftfield, Maribou State, Fatboy Slim (of course), Four Tet and Overmono are amongst the numerous EDM names on the bill.

Hip hop icon Busta Rhymes makes his Glastonbury debut, while modern rap superstars on the lineup include AJ Tracey, Doechii and Denzel Curry.

Other artists announced so far include Alanis Morissette Gracie Adams, Ezra Collective, John Fogerty, Beabadoobee, Gary Numan, Caribou, Black Uhuru, Franz Ferdinand, Goat, Inhaler and Kae Tempest.

While day splits have been announced, it is unclear how the stages will shape up, with many more artists set to be announced over the coming months.

See the full Glastonbury 2025 lineup so far below. Glastonbury 2025 takes place June 25-29 at Worthy Farm in Pilton, Somerset. Tickets have long sold out but a resale of returned tickets is expected at some point in the next few weeks. Hit the official Glastonbury website for more information.

Neil Young has been confirmed to headline Glastonbury 2025, 48 hours after announcing his decision to pull out of the festival, which he had claimed was “under corporate control”.

Posting on the Neil Young Archives website earlier this week, Young wrote, “The Chrome Hearts and I were looking forward to playing Glastonbury, one of my all-time favourite outdoor gigs. We were told that BBC was now a partner in Glastonbury and wanted us to do a lot of things in a way we were not interested in.

“It seems Glastonbury is now under corporate control and is not the way I remember it being. Thanks for coming to see us the last time! We will not be playing Glastonbury on this tour because it is a corporate turn-off, and not for me like it used to be. Hope to see you at one of the other venues on the tour.”

But today, January 3, the 79-year-old singer/songwriter has declared that he's back on the bill, as one of the weekend's three headline acts.

“Due to an error in the information received, I had decided to not play the Glastonbury festival, which I always have loved,” he writes on his site. “Happily, the festival is now back on our itinerary and we look forward to playing! Hope to see you there!”

Festival booker Emily Eavis also confirmed Young's return to the line-up.

“What a start to the year!” she posted on Instagram. “Neil Young is an artist who’s very close to our hearts at Glastonbury. He does things his own way and that’s why we love him. We can’t wait to welcome him back here to headline the Pyramid in June.”

Young previously headlined Glastonbury festival in 2009.

Neil Young has pulled out of this year's Glastonbury Festival, citing interference by the festival's broadcasting partner, the BBC.

Posting on the Neil Young Archives website, Young says, "The Chrome Hearts and I were looking forward to playing Glastonbury, one of my all-time favourite outdoor gigs. We were told that BBC was now a partner in Glastonbury and wanted us to do a lot of things in a way we were not interested in.

"It seems Glastonbury is now under corporate control and is not the way I remember it being. Thanks for coming to see us the last time! We will not be playing Glastonbury on this tour because it is a corporate turn-off, and not for me like it used to be. Hope to see you at one of the other venues on the tour."

The BBC has been the official broadcast partner of the event since 1997 and has expanded its remit in the years since. The Corporation launched its "Introducing" stage in 2007 and renewed its broadcast rights in 2017. Last year's event was the first to be broadcast globally. Young has played Glastonbury once, in 2009, when he headlined the Pyramid Stage alongside Bruce Springsteen and Blur.

This year's Glastonbury Festival, which will be held at its traditional home at Worthy Farm in Piltdown, Somerset, England, between Jun 25 and June 29, is already sold out. Headliners have not yet been announced, but Rod Stewart will fill the traditional late-afternoon legend slot on the final day of the event. He last played at Glastonbury in 2002.

"I’m absolutely thrilled to announce that I’ll be playing Glastonbury 2025!" said Stewart. "After all these years, I’m proud and ready and more than able to take the stage again to pleasure and titillate my friends at Glastonbury in June. I’ll see you there!”

Glastonbury Festival has announced that Rod Stewart will play the prestigious legend slot.

The Do Ya Think I'm Sexy? singer will perform on the Pyramid Stage at Worthy Farm on Sunday, June 29.

The festival's official social media posted in a statement: “We’re excited to announce that Sir @RodStewart will play the Sunday teatime legend slot at Glastonbury 2025".

While Stewart writes: "I’m absolutely thrilled to announce that I’ll be playing @glastonbury 2025! After all these years, I’m proud and ready and more than able to take the stage again to pleasure and titillate my friends at Glastonbury in June. I’ll see you there!”.

Festival co-organiser Emily Eavis comments: “Bringing Sir Rod Stewart back for the Sunday afternoon slot on the Pyramid stage is everything we could wish for. What a way to bow out with the final legends slot before we take a fallow year. We cannot wait!”.

In previous years, Glastonbury Festival's legend slot saw performances from Shania Twain, Cat Stevens, Diana Ross, Kylie Minogue, Dolly Parton and Barry Gibb, among others.

Stewart is the first act to officially be announced for next year's event. Other performers rumoured to play the festival include Sam Fender, Green Day, Olivia Rodrigo and Lady Gaga as headliners.

Also in 2025, the iconic musician will be hosting a Las Vegas residency at The Colosseum in Caesars Palace. He will additionally be hitting the road for a tour across Europe and North America.

In 2026, Glastonbury Festival will take a fallow year to allow the farm ground time to rest and recover.

Noel Gallagher has become a fan of West Belfast hip-hop trio Kneecap, after seeing the band storm Glastonbury festival at the weekend. 

Kneecap - rappers Mo Chara (Liam Óg Ó Hannaidh) and Móglaí Bap (Naoise Ó Cairealláin), plus DJ Próvaí (JJ Ó Dochartaigh) - played two sets at Worthy Farm last weekend, performing at 11:30am on The Woodsies stage, and at 1:30am the following morning on the Shangri-La stage, where Gallagher was spotted in attendance, alongside former Doctor Who actor Matt Smith.

Speaking on his friend Matt Morgan's podcast (for Patreon subscribers), Gallagher was full of praise for the Irish trio's performance

“We went to see this Northern Irish street kids called Kneecap… they’re kind of pro Republican rappers,”  he told Morgan.  “We get there and the tent is absolutely fucking smashed packed – you couldn’t get in. These three lads walk out, one of them is in a balaclava and they rap in Gaelic [sic]. They’ve got a song called Get Your Brits Out. There’s a lot of humour to it… I couldn’t believe how enjoyable it was.”

“Being of Irish heritage I found that quite funny and they were really, really good.”

Reviewing the band's Woodies set on Saturday morning, Louder's Stephen Hill wrote,  “In a year where a lot of the big draws are fairly mainstream, family-friendly and cuddly, Kneecap bring a sense of legitimate danger and aggression to Glastonbury. The fast-rising West Belfast trio are, unquestionably, the lairiest band you’ll see at this year's festival... This feels like the beginning of something very special.”

In May, speaking on Morgan's podcast, Gallagher also enthused about a recent trip to see the ABBA Voyage show currently playing in London, and suggested that he would be "bang up" for signing off on a similar show preserving Oasis at their '90s peak.

Hailing the ABBA Voyage show as “fucking unbelievable”, Gallagher continued, “It was great – an hour and a half gig. It was very, very impressive. I genuinely thought at one point that the people on the stage, which were holograms, were… they looked that real that I thought they were actors. The way they walk to the stage is so realistic. If you ever get the chance to go, it’s well worth it. I was very impressed by it to be honest.”

Doubtless speaking somewhat tongue-in-cheek, Gallagher added, “If anybody wants to do an Oasis one, give us a shout. I would be bang up for it. I’d say, Great, speak to that guy over there and then come up with a figure and then he’ll relay it to me and I’ll say either yes or no.”

“There aren’t a lot of new rock acts to choose from if I’m honest. Hopefully that will emerge again, my heyday was 1995 with Pulp and Oasis and Radiohead... and that was great but music changes all the time and right now this is where we’re at.” These were the words shared by Glastonbury organiser and booker Emily Eavis in a recent interview with The Telegraph when discussing the criticism the all-conquering UK mega-festival has received for a perceived lack of rock acts on its latest bill, topped by pop superstar Dua Lipa, modern r’n’b queen SZA and perennial Glasto darlings, Coldplay. 

The criticism itself has been, to be frank, a little misguided; Glastonbury’s 2024 incarnation boasted plenty of great rock music for those willing to peak past the Pyramid Stage, the likes of Idles, The Last Dinner Party, Fontaines D.C., Soft Play, Nothing But Thieves, Yard Act, High Vis, Skindred and Voice Of Baceprot just some of the names bringing the riffs to Worthy Farm this year. Eavis’ words will, however, raise alarm bells for rock fans, not least because they paint a somewhat inaccurate picture of the state of rock music in 2024. 

It’s certainly true that guitar-based music in general is struggling to generate major, headliner-sized artists at a consistent rate when compared to the ongoing outputs of pop, hip hop and EDM. But scratch just a little beneath the surface and you’ll find countless bands pushing envelopes, breaking boundaries and moulding rock into thrilling and curious new shapes - and nowhere will you find more evidence of that than in the incredible modern metal scene.

Metal has always thrived in the underground, unbothered by mainstream trends and steered by artists with the creative freedom to find the most visceral, teeth-rattling new ways to express themselves. But in recent years, the genre has exploded into life in new ways, crowning all manner of colourful and creative personalities as leaders in the scene and seeing genuinely heavy, abrasive acts gain mainstream critical clout and momentum without sacrificing their sound or core values.

It can be seen from the genre’s low, murky depths to its new class of arena headliners. Over the last decade or so, the number of metal acts to graduate to arena status in the UK is actually pretty impressive: Bring Me The Horizon, Architects, Ghost, Parkway Drive, Nightwish, Within Temptation, Sabaton and Sleep Token are just some of the names to have made the jump. True, some have done so quicker than others (Sleep Token’s viral explosion last year stands in stark contrast to the slow and steady grinds of European veterans like Nightwish and Sabaton), but metal’s ability to shift a lot of tickets in major venues is in its healthiest state for quite some time. Do any of these bands have the kind of pop culture footprint needed to headline Glasto? Probably only Bring Me The Horizon, and at a push, but when you have plenty of arena-sized artists taking up slots right across the bill each year, there’s absolutely no reason all those bands and more couldn’t command decent spots on the lineup.

Really, though, it’s the emergent generation of metal bands that are the most exciting and offer Glastonbury the opportunity to showcase rock at its most edgy and vital. So far this year, we’ve seen stellar releases from the likes of boundary-prodding Netherlands doom metallers Dool, whose new album The Shape Of Fluidity is a shimmering, transgressive journey that beautifully dissects binary ideals and fragile notions of identity. There’s also Dvne’s bold, cosmic progressive metal, which reaches for expansive new sonic realms on the excellent Voidkind. Or there’s the genre-hopping eccentricity of Seeyouspacecowboy’s marvellous Coup De Grace, which takes the band’s sound-clashing ‘sasscore’ to dizzying, emotionally turbulent new heights. If you want something a little more straightforward, you could allow Knocked Loose to blow your nipples off with their savage brand of metallic hardcore, which manages to cover new ground on You Won’t Go Before You’re Supposed To (hello, reggaeton breakdowns!) without compromising an inch of their all-out, relentless heaviness. In darker waters, there’s the trope-burning feminist black metal of Witch Club Satan’s debut album, or the gnarly versatility of upcoming death metallers Gatecreeper with their splendid latest, Dark Superstition.

All these artists and so many more are proof that metal remains the ground zero for innovative, fearless music-making in rock. It’s also currently the place to find the kind of big, unforgettable personalities that festivals like Glastonbury love to champion; last week saw the release of the debut album from self-styled princess of ‘Bimbocore’, Scene Queen, whose righteous feminine fury comes wrapped in a delightfully unique mix of guttural metalcore breakdowns and sugary-sweet glitter-pop. In the coming weeks, we’ll also see new releases from corpsepainted, werewolf-loving power metallers Powerwolf (they sing about erections and play arenas in Europe!), nu metal-championing, genre-mashing sister duo Alt Blk Era and Eurovision-invading, dazzlingly camp metal troupe Lord Of The Lost. All would be the kinds of bookings that’d go down a storm at the world’s biggest music festival - or at least leave a damn-near unforgettable impression.

To give Emily Eavis and Glastonbury their dues, the festival had made great progress in giving metal a bigger platform prior to the pandemic. In the years following Metallica’s historic headline performance in 2014, Glasto teamed up with legendary underground label Earache to bring heavier bands to the lineup, resulting in the likes of Gojira, Napalm Death, Venom Prison, Employed To Serve, Entombed A.D. and Ho99o9 getting to play. Post-2020, however, things have trailed off; Skindred’s riotous ragga-metal and Voice Of Baceprot’s Indonesian metallic clatter were both voraciously received this year, but there’s always room for more. Music may well change all the time, but metal always has something to say, and never more so than now. If Glastonbury is looking for exciting, innovate rock music to bring to its bill in 2025, we know exactly where to start.

Glastonbury 2024 was another for the ages: with fears of a long overdue muddy year ultimately unfounded, Worthy Farm (mostly) bathed in sunshine as another stellar mix of music legends, exciting up and coming artists and beloved cult icons brought five days of fun and frolics to the world's biggest music festival. This year saw Dua Lipa prove her doubters wrong as a more than worthy Friday night Pyramid party starter and Shania Twain bring Maximum Country Hun Energy, while unannounced on-stage appearances from the likes of Kasabian, Damon Albarn and, er, Michael J Fox kept Glastonbury's reputation for springing a surprise or two well intact. 

Dozens of artists put in showings worth celebrating, but there were a few whose sets have almost certainly waltzed straight into Glasto lore. With that in mind, here are the 11 acts that undoubtedly defined this year's festival.

Fat Dog 

Home of the weird and wonderful, Fat Dog’s barking ska-punk fit right at home at this year’s Glastonbury Festival, with each of their four sets producing crowds of skankers, leapers and laughers. Like a gaggle of wind-up toys, the South Londoners were a non-stop party, their erratic Madness-meets-Soft Play performances featuring a dog mask-donning drummer and a synth player who would often scuttle across the stage like a crab. Captaining the chaos was the ever-rowdy frontman Joe Love, who'd join the audience down in the dance pits. Silly, surreal and heaps of fun, and they’re still yet to release an album. In fact, their debut, WOOF, is scheduled to arrive on September 6, so keep an ear out.

Confidence Man

‘C-O-O-L cooooooool / I'm a cool party girl in a cool party world’. Possibly the most vogue band since Madonna released, well, Vogue, Aussie quartet Confidence Man brought camp choreographed dancing, pouting, posing and multiple outfit changes to their packed-out Other Stage set. The Barbie and Ken front-duo cemented themselves as icons in the making, with Janet Planet gazing over her sunglasses before leaping off of Sugar Bones, who ripped off his shirt multiple times. Fan favourites such as Does It Make You Feel Good?, Feels Like A Different Thing, Holiday and Don’t You Know I’m In A Band ushered in a rave feel to the field, and it felt like an incredibly special, career-building moment. Next year, we expect to see this foursome on the Pyramid stage. 

Lambrini Girls 

Politically-minded punks Lambrini Girls are here to make change, and there's no band fighting the fight quite like them. Across their four performances this weekend, they dished out a platter of patriarchy-smashing punk and pin-sharp lyrics about trans inclusivity, sexual empowerment and male violence. Frontwoman Phoebe Lunny was a snarling force of nature, as she ravaged her guitar as if trying to fight off a rabid animal, before demanding to be hoisted up over the crowd. She also made multiple speeches about the ongoing tragedy in Palestine as well as about the importance of giving JK Rowling the middle finger. 

Little Simz

"Finally made it to the Pyramid!" beamed the impossibly cool Simz early on in a thunderous set that presented a serous argument for the Nigerian-British rapper to be  anointed as hip hop's next big Glasto headliner. At just thirty years old, the artist born Simbiatu Ajikawo is on a run of top-tier albums as good as just about any rap great you could measure her against, and her versatility was on show in style here, the emotional, swelling Silhouette and Heart On Fire happily rubbing shoulders with all-out, hard-hitting bangers like Venom and Gorilla. Even from her lofty current standing, the only way is surely up. 

Gossip

For those who were uninterested in hearing Chris Martin go on about the colour yellow at Saturday night's headline Pyramid offering, the other option was a far more invigorating one, with Gossip getting the real party going over on the Woodsies stage via riotous indie bangers and swathes of star power. 

Despite professing to be under the weather, frontwoman Beth Ditto's vocals towered above the noise, her punk attitude seething through each note with all the might of a motor being ripped into action. Between the dance floor-filling tracks, Ditto also took a few moments to show just how grateful for the moment she was, as tears pricked her eyes on multiple occasions. 

As they brought the set to a close with everyone’s favourite 2006 indie anthem Standing In The Way of Control, the tent was a deafening celebration, as Ditto then dipped into a few lines of Nirvana’s Smells Like Teen Spirit before starting the chant “There’s more of us than there are of them”. Empowering, emotional and a reminder as good as any that even after a 12 year hiatus, Gossip should never be an option, but a first choice. 

Aurora

As though entering some kind of fairy realm, the energy Aurora brought to Glastonbury Festival over on the sunny Park stage felt hazily euphoric, as her feet swirled and danced across the stage, ice-blue skirt billowing behind her, casting us all under her mesmeric spell. Showcasing numerous new songs from her recently-released album What Happened To The Heart?, tracks including the Kate Bush-coded When The Dark Dresses Lightly and the rave-y Starvation got fans spiralling their arms in the air, as older favourites such as the TikTok-viral Runaway sparked a sweet singalong. While being possibly the the most ethereal creature to walk the Earth, Aurora also demonstrated her mischievous side - producing the 'call me' hand sign to punters on the front row and even pretending to flash the crowd - and later, her serious one, as she made a plea for the children of Palestine and offered a heartfelt speech to the LGBTQ+ community. 

Lankum

No crowd was more eerily silent this weekend than the one watching Lankum's afternoon set over in The Park on Saturday. Between their haunting harmonies, doom-drenched instrumentation and uplifting traditional folk melodies, the Dublin group made for a spectacular experience that was even met with tears from onlookers, particularly during their acapella rewrite of Arcady’s The Rocks of Bawn, retitled as The Rocks of Palestine as an ode to the current conflicts in the region. As they swung between jubilant jigs and dismal dread, the atmosphere was a pendulum swing of emotions that overtook the senses and left us all feeling raw. Powerful stuff. 

Skindred

This weekend, Skindred delivered what might just have been the most aggressive, impressive and energetic show of their career…and that’s Skindred we’re talking about. Let that sink in. New songs such as Smile and Gimme That Boom sounded incredible and added a little something extra to the set, and classics like Nobody and Kill the Power ruled like they always do. Through it all, Benji Webbe continued to make claim for the title of greatest living frontman, and as ever, Warning and the crowd-pleasing Newport Helicopter sent jaws to the floor. 

The Streets

The Streets were absolutely magnificent fun, and were undoubtedly one of the most enduring memories of the weekend. The set was basically cut into two parts, the first  focusing on Mike Skinner’s legendary debut Original Pirate Material and the second on the chart-topping A Grand Don’t Come For Free, with a few choice cuts from beyond those two eras chucked in for good measure, with Skinner holding a vice-like grip on Glastonbury from the word go. By the second song, the gobby Who’s Got the Bag, Skinner had dived into the crowd onto someone’s shoulders, trying to grab a flag with his face on, proving to be a master at riling up his audience. Classic chaos there from The Streets. 

Avril Lavigne 

Canada's pop punk princess made the career decision of a lifetime when she decided to lean back into her emo-laden teen angst roots for 2022's Love Sux. It helped her surf the wave of millennial rock nostalgia that shows no sign of abating, earning her one of the biggest Other Stage crowds in Glasto history. Avril made the most of it with an all-killer, no filler set that was more polished and professional than raw and emotional, but the mahooooosive audience in front of her brought enough noise and jubilation to make this a truly unforgettable moment.

Coldplay

Predictable? Yes, but there's just no fucking with a good thing, and the fact is that Coldplay remain Glastonbury's ultimate house band, and for good reason. Their now trademark dazzling light show continues to evolve in boundary-pushing ways, while a hits-stacked, guest-star-filled fifth headline set pulled out all the stops imaginable, from live track debuts to covers to multiple stages, fireworks, confetti, streamers, a choir, Michael J Fox, for some reason...it all added up to an absolute Christmas dinner of a show: chaotic, over the top and way too much to take in in one sitting. But then would anyone have Coldplay at Glasto any other way?

• How to rewatch Glastonbury 2024: Relive the weekend's best moments

Avril Lavigne emerged as one of the surprise stars of Glastonbury 2024, performing on the Other Stage to a huge crowd more suited to a headline act... and this while competing for attention not merely with acts on the site's other stages, but also with the England versus Slokia football match in the Euros, which was taking place at the same time. 

Lavigne had a 6-7pm slot on the Other Stage, and drew such a massive crowd that, as The Guardian reported, stewards were forced to close one entrance to the site for safety reasons, as the field was already beyond capacity. 

Lavigne's currently popularity is down to more than rose-tinted nostalgia. Pop-rock superstar Olivia Rodrigo cites the Canadian singer as a key influence - and covered Lavigne's Complicated at Glastonbury 2022 - while artists such as Willow and Halestorm's Lzzy Hale have also been effusive in their praise for the star. 

Watched from side-stage by model/actress Cara Delevingne and actress Anya Taylor-Joy, Lavigne's 12-song set kicked off with Girlfriend, and included UK Top 10 hit singles Complicated, Don't Tell Me, I'm With You and My Happy Ending, before climaxing with the singer's signature anthem, Sk8er Boi.

Watch the BBC's footage of Sk8er Boi and I'm With You below:

• How to rewatch Glastonbury 2024: Relive all the best moments

Talking about the singer's influence in the documentary Avril Lavigne: Skater Girl, a young Lzzy Hale said, “When I first heard her album I was particularly blown away by the uniqueness of it and the fact that it definitely was not your normal pop rock stuff. I enjoyed the realness of it and I enjoyed the fact that you can tell that she’s doing something that she loves. And she’s not trying to be anything but who she is.”

After what was an epic weekend, Glastonbury 2025 has come to an end. Although somewhat light on rock artists (we were gutted Deftones has to cancel) there was loads of amazing music to enjoy for everyone.

Neil Young delivered an excellent no-frills set on the Pyramid Stage with his band The Chrome Hearts, Amyl And The Sniffers got the crowd whipped up with a brilliant and raucous performance, mystery band Patchwork turned out to be Pulp and proceeded to take us back to the wonderful days of the 90s with a hit-filled set - and Turnstile delivered a blistering set we called a "milestone performance that will be spoken about in hushed tones for a very, very long time."

And while Glastonbury 2025 is now in the rear view mirror, the BBC iPlayer is home to loads of archived sets from the weekend that you'll be able to enjoy throughout June and July.

How to rewatch Glastonbury 2025 in the UK

• UK coverage - free on BBC iPlayer

The BBC has become the main channel for all things Glastonbury over the years - and 2025 was no different. And, although the main event is now over, there's a heap of archived content from throughout the weekend up on the BBC iPlayer.

The content has been split into a variety of sections to make everything easier to navigate: We have Superstars + Crowd Pleasers, Must Watch Tracks, Glasto 2025 Recap, Pop Perfection, Wind Down, Electronic, Beats + Bars, Guitars, Off The Beaten Path and Sidetracked By Glastonbury.

Among the streams you can watch for the next month include those by The 1975, Wet Leg, Pulp, The Prodigy, Kneecap, Alanis Morissette, Supergrass, Ezra Collective, Olivia Rodrigo, Gary Numan, Beth Gibbons, Japanese Breakfast, Wolf Alice, Weezer, Nova Twins, Future Islands, Goat and Rod Stewart.

If you're based in the UK, you can access all this content through the BBC iPlayer.

How to rewatch Glastonbury 2025 outside the UK

• Watch from anywhere outside the UK: Nord VPN for only $3.09 per month

With so much going on around the festival, there's a good chance you missed some of it - and if you're on holiday and want to catch-up right now, you can use a VPN service such as NordVPN, our current top pick. It’s not a difficult process and you can get up and running in minutes – and right now it's available at a great price and with a 30-day money-back guarantee.

To use, simply click on the link, download the file and install the VPN. Open it up on your device – smartphone, tablet or laptop – click on a server location, pick the stream and you'll be ready to rewatch loads of Glastonbury coverage.

How to use a VPN

1. Install a VPN. As we've mentioned above, Nord VPN is Louder's favourite.

2. Choose the location you wish to connect to in the VPN. If you're currently outside the UK on holiday and want to rewatch the BBC's Glastonbury's coverage, just select 'UK' from the list.

3. Turn the volume up and relax. Sign in to your iPlayer account and you're all set to rewatch the weekend's action from around the festival site.

Festival playlists

If you'd like to discover new artists playing the festival or listen to some of your favourites, there are a few Glastonbury playlists available on music streaming services.

Spotify is hosting the official Glastonbury playlist, but Apple Music and Amazon Music Unlimited also have playlists dedicated to the 2025 festival.

And speaking of Amazon Music Unlimited, sign up between now and July 14, and you'll get four months completely free. It's a great way to discover all that the service has to offer.

Read more

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• I'm a Glastonbury Festival veteran of over 20 years - here are 5 things I never go to Worthy Farm without

If you’re someone looking for one last big, party blowout on Glastonbury’s Sunday night, you might feel that that the bookers have dropped the ball a tad on the festival’s two main stages. Sza’s dreamy R&B is hardly going to get blood pumping on The Pyramid Stage, while, as fine a band as they are, The National’s lo-fi, introvert indie rock wasn’t written with a mind to get The Other Stage dancing.

It means that, if it’s energy you’re after, there’s only one place to be at Glasto as things wind down: over on The West Holts Stage, for French electronic duo Justice.  Armed with fresh new tunes from their wonderful recent album Hyperdrama in their back pocket, Gaspard Auge and Xavier de Rosnay nonchalantly amble onstage in front of a rammed field, backed by a blinding light show and some floor-rumbling bass, and proceed to give Glastonbury 2024 the arse-kicking ending that it deserves.

Kicking off their set with the parping horn intro that melds into the stalking electro bass of Genesis, the evergreen opener from their classic 2007 debut album Cross, the main thing that strikes you from Justice’s sensory overload is just how incredible they sound. Not only are they about five times louder than anyone who has played this stage all weekend, but the quality of the sound is astonishing, every drop: every synth stab and every thunderous bass line is crystal clear. Morphing into Phantom and sounding like Daft Punk’s obnoxious, glue-sniffing cousins, Justice hit harder than 95% of the rest of the festival's lineup this year. 

The idea that EDM is predominantly a sugary, poppy genre of music is obviously an outdated one, but when the duo launch into the chest-thumping, mass singalong of We Are Your Friends or the throbbing electroclash of new song Incognito, it’s like a sonic uppercut from a mallet. This is not arms-in-the-air, dance around the handbag house; this is pounding, headbanging, body-rocking synthwave. And it’s heavy as fuck.

It’s also far from one-dimensional; the woozy dreamwave of Afterimage is captivatingly hypnotic and the closing D.A.N.C.E. is brilliantly joyous, bug-eyed fun. If that wasn’t enough, Justice also just look cool - at least when you can see them and aren’t being blinded by their washes of red lights, strobes and lasers. Auge and de Rosnay are oceans of calm surrounded by a field of people losing their shit, strolling between their desks to drop yet another neutron bomb of bass as casually as if they're taking the recycling out. 

Rock fans have embraced the likes of The Prodigy and Pendulum in the past - quite why Justice, arguably louder than the pair of them, haven’t had the same treatment en masse is somewhat confusing. After the battering they just gave Glastonbury, maybe it’s time they started to take notice, too.

If there was any justice in the world at all, legendary Dexys frontman Kevin Rowland would be walking on during the coveted legends slot on The Pyramid Stage this weekend, as opposed appearing in front of the meagre (but appreciative) crowd that greet him on the far smaller Park Stage this afternoon.

Dexys were once one of Britain’s biggest bands, with a string of hits, multiple number ones and critical adoration from all corners of this country. That was a long time ago, though, and their status has clearly dropped. Much of this may have been down to the notoriously enigmatic Rowland, a man who has changed his bandmates more than he does his socks and has a habit of making moves that seem to deliberately diminish his commercial standing at every turn.

But today Rowland, looking healthy and happy and sounding note-perfect, buries all of his previous demons in a mere 45 minutes, with a set of old and new songs that, in the case of the former, sound as effortlessly unique and memorable as they did back in the early 80s.

The post-punk, neo soul, folk of Tell Me When My Light Turns Green, Geno, Jackie Wilson Says (complete with that iconic photo of darts legend Jockey Wilson), Until I Believe in My Soul and, of course, Come on Eileen all sound every inch the classic UK standards that they deserve to be considered. Even Rowland’s tongue in cheek dad jokes are peppered with a few serious moments, as he barks “Free Palestine, and fuck NATO… they’re behind this!” And opens up about his previous self destructive tendencies with a level of honesty most artists would balk at. Seeing the man back to his rabble-rousing, crowd-pleasing best is quite a sight.

Dexys simultaneously feel like the greatest secret at this year's Glasto and yet the perfect band for the festival. A stunning, beautiful and glorious return from one of our finest artists.

• How to rewatch Glastonbury 2024: No matter where you are

Skindred arrive at Glastonbury having established themselves as a legitimate arena headlining band with a successful, mainstream crossover album to their name. Yet the Avalon stage they headline this evening is hardly one of the festivals's largest tents. Skindred, though, as pretty much anyone who has ever attended a festival in this country can attest to, don’t do bad shows. In fact, they don’t even do average shows. What they do bring, something even frontman Benji Webbe will admit, is the same thing over and over again: “You’ll never be surprised and you’ll never be disappointed” he has said previously.

But, even though Skindred do go through their usual repertoire this evening, there's clearly something about Glastonbury that has got them fired up. Yes, playing to a crowd of hardened metal fans all ready to do the Newport helicopter the second they walk onstage is always killer. But faced with plenty of strangers wandering over from Dua Lipa or Fatboy Slim and still looking to party, Skindred get the bit between their teeth and deliver what might just be the most aggressive, impressive and energetic show of their career…and that’s Skindred we’re talking about. Let that sink in.

New songs such as Smile and Gimme That Boom sound incredible and add a little something extra to the set: Arya Goggin batters his drums like Roger Taylor and Tony Thompson’s love child; Mikeydemus is peeling out riffs all over the place with archer-like precision; Dan Pugsley’s bass, surely The ‘Dred’s most underrated attack weapon, sounds superbly dubby and classics like Nobody and Kill the Power rule like they always do. But tonight belongs to Benji Webbe.

Absolutely in the conversation of greatest living frontman, Benji refuses to take intrigue and apathy from the crowd this evening, making everyone wave their hands and bounce with their ragga-metal perfection. “I thought Glastonbury liked to party on a Friday night? “ he barks at one point.

By the time we get to Warning and the Newport Helicopter, jaws are on the floor. It’s easy to forget just how incredible a live band Skindred are when we metal fans get to see them so much, but witnessing them firing on all cylinders and with a clear point to prove in front of stunned onlookers unaware of what they were walking into is some sight. It might have been the same, but it also might just be the greatest Skindred show of all time.

• How to rewatch Glastonbury 2024: No matter where you are

Another band who appear to have captured the hearts and minds of a generation younger than their own, Mike Skinner’s bedroom rap project-turned-party-starting sound system behemoth rock up on The Other Stage just before headliners Disclosure and leave an almost impossible bar for anyone else to reach during their hour onstage.

Whilst Skinner’s material post-2004’s chart-topping A Grand Don’t Come For Free has been patchy and unrelatable in the eyes of many, when he rocks up with a set full of bangers and the urge to cause chaos, there aren’t many acts that can come close to the joy of a Streets gig. The set is basically cut in two parts, the first mainly focusing on his legendary debut Original Pirate Material and the second on the aforementioned A Grand…, with a few choice cuts from beyond those two eras chucked in for good measure.

Opening with Turn the Page, and with Has it Come to This, Don’t Mug Yourself and Weak Become Heroes from that classic debut coming hot on its heels and all sounding box-fresh 22 years after their release, Skinner has a vice-like grip on Glastonbury from the word go. By the second song, the gobby Who’s Got the Bag, he's in the crowd on someone’s shoulders and trying to grab a flag with his face on. He is a master at riling up his audience, telling them that they need to get up the hill to meet him at the tiny Temple stage at 5am where the real party can start.

Frankly, if this is just a warm up, that sounds like it could be the wildest party Glastonbury has or will ever see. Because by the time Skinner’s band smash out the riff to Iron Man by Black Sabbath just prior to a chaotic, punk rock blast through Fit But You Know It, leading to Skinner jumping back in the crowd to lead everyone in a synchronised flag waving session through a throbbing Blinded By the Lights and Take Me As I Am’s obnoxious, phlegm-stained dubstep groove, everyone in this field has gone feral.

Absolutely magnificent fun. When they look back at Glastonbury 2024, this will undoubtedly be one of the most enduring memories of the weekend. Although if you can actuallly remember it, chances are you weren’t there.

A black cloud makes its way across Glastonbury Festival’s Park stage - though today it’s a metaphorical one, for the bleakness that Dublin folk group Lankum bring feels entirely out of place in the current setting of gleaming sun that shines its way in a cheery halo around the area. In similar spirit, the band’s performance is one of polarity; great despair and intense joy, ebullient jigs and dismal doom. And in a word, the experience is spectacular. 

After welcoming their crowd of “sexy weirdos” - the band are continually warm and witty - Lankum creep into their ten-minute cover of traditional folk song The Wild Rover from 2019’s The Livelong Day. The crowd are eerily silent (which is impressive, for this commonly chatty Glastonbury lot) as strings build into a see-sawing, foreboding melody to frontwoman Radie Peat’s bewitching voice, who is soon joined by the rest of her band - Ian Lynch, Daragh Lynch and Cormac MacDiarmada - in haunting harmony. Then, the strings bend, aching and swelling all the more into chasm-deep wells of dread. Lankum’s sense of doom is both disturbing yet euphoric, a tragic, glorious rebirth of the senses that finds its way into each of their following songs.

Tears flow freely from the audience during The Rocks of Palestine - a stunning acapella rewrite of Arcady’s The Rocks of Bawn to feature lyrics about the ongoing tragedy in Gaza. ‘Free Palestine’ chants commence, before Peat remarks her delight over seeing so many Palestine flags and keffiyeh’s in the audience. Then, she dryly quips: “Good luck to the BBC for editing that one out!’. 

At the end of The Pride of Petravore, another folk reimagining that gives the original more of a discordant, piratical edge, they sign off with a passage of Sting’s We Work The Black Seam. Ian then declares with a wicked grin how The Police legend is a big fan of their work, putting on his best impression as he recalls how he once described Lankum as “fucking deadly”.

Elsewhere, they dip into the traditional Irish songbook again with The Rocky Road To Dublin, their layers of vocal harmony lacing in a soul-stirring, uplifting blend. Not only does this moment feel out of place in the surrounding weather, but also out of time - a mesmerising journey back to dark, rain-beaten nights in Ireland centuries ago. 

Images of grisly landscapes echo in the mind later for the closing Go Dig My Grave from 2023’s Mercury Award-nominated False Lankum, its overwhelming cacophony bleeding out into the best folk horror soundtrack never written. As they finish, the tense shoulders and held-breaths of the crowd give out into roaring, satiated applause, and the momentarily, oh-so-deliciously dark corner of Glastonbury returns to its former, now somewhat more ordinary light.

• How to rewatch Glastonbury 2024: No matter where you are

For fans of mid-2000s indie, having Kasabian’s secret set at The Woodsies clash with Bloc Party on The Other Stage could be something of a Sophie’s Choice.

But, really, when considering the relative merits of the pair, it feels like an easy decision to make if you’re a fan of more creative, angular and art-rock over pure, lager-lobbing bangers. Bloc Party are celebrating 20 years of their career-high, debut album Silent Alarm, and, like many artists at Glastonbury this year, that nostalgia bump seems to have given their stock a significant boost; The Other Stage is heaving as they arrive.

Opening with a gorgeously woozy So Here We Are and the choppy, bouncing, tabloid-baiting Hunting For Witches, Kele Okereke’s crew still sound brilliantly idiosyncratic after two decades of service. Kele’s voice remains soulful, pained and distinct and his band's melding of disco beats, dubby bass and wiry post-punk riffs remind you why they never deserved to be dumped in alongside Razorlight, The Kooks and the rest of the aimless, artless indie landfill boom of the noughties. A song like Mercury has far more in common with Kid A-era Radiohead than it does The Pigeon Detectives, which is possibly why Bloc Party’s moment in the sun was so brief, a band who were too challenging and odd to be gurning away on The Friday Night Project back in 2007.

Instead Bloc Party have experimented, evolved and played the long game, and today, with younger fans discovering their music decades after its release, are treated with the reverence they deserve. “We’ve got a few more rockets in our pockets,” Okereke smiles with his tongue firmly in his cheek, before detonating an awesome version of Helicopter. It illicits the biggest response of the set, but Bloc Party, never keen to play to the gallery, close with the trinity of Flux, This Modern Love and Ratchet, all of which are every bit their big hits equal. A reminder of just how fantastic and influential a band they are and proof that Bloc Party can still compete with any cutting edge guitar music in the modern era.

• How to rewatch Glastonbury 2024: No matter where you are

Twenty-five years ago this weekend, R.E.M. played a brilliant set at Glastonbury festival. It was Michael Stipe, Peter Buck and Mike Mills’ first visit to Worthy Farm but it very nearly didn’t happen, thanks to an over-eager security guard who wouldn’t let Stipe onto the site.

As reported by The Guardian back in 2000, Stipe was travelling to the festival by helicopter, with the chopper carrying him landing in a neighbouring farmer’s field and festival worker and local Robert Kearle handed the task of going to pick the megastar singer up. “They asked me to do it because of my local knowledge,” Kearle told The Guardian. “He was the biggest star of the festival so I didn’t want to mess up.”

Kearle, of course, wasn’t banking on a jobsworth security guard almost scuppering R.E.M.’s headline set. Picking Stipe up and heading back to Worthy Farm, Kearle must have had the air of mission accomplished en route with the R.E.M. man in a talkative mood. “We had a really good chat on the way,” he said. “He was great to talk to, very friendly and interested in what was happening at the festival.”

Enter Mr If You’re Name’s Not Down You’re Not Coming In, telling the pair when they arrived at the gate that if they didn’t have tickets, they weren’t coming in. “I couldn’t believe what I was hearing, I said, ‘I’ve got Michael Stipe here, Mr Eavis sent me specially to fetch him.” But the overzealous security guard was not budging. “No ticket, no entry,” they were told. “Michael Stipe? Never heard of him.”

This is where, Kearle recalled, Stipe took matters into his own hands. Stepping out of the vehicle, he said, “I’m playing on the Pyramid Stage in a few hours. If you don’t let me in now, I’m off. You’ll have a lot of disappointed people on your hands.”

And so our antagonist relented, Michael Stipe was allowed onto the festival site, and R.E.M. performed one of the best headline slots in Glastonbury’s prestigious history…

With the final day of Glastonbury 2024 upon us, festival organiser/booker Emily Eavis says that she would have liked to have seen more rock bands on her family's farm over the past weekend, but that this wasn't an option this year as “there aren’t a lot of new rock acts to choose from.”

In a new [paywalled] interview with The Telegraph, Eavis admits that, no matter who is booked for the iconic English festival, inevitably she will receive criticisms from some quarters that the line-up is “too rock, too grime, too hip hop, too pop”, but argues that the bill each year “reflects what’s happening in the music world at the moment.”

“There aren’t a lot of new rock acts to choose from if I’m honest,” Eavis tells the British newspaper. “Hopefully that will emerge again, my heyday was 1995 with Pulp and Oasis and Radiohead... and that was great but music changes all the time and right now this is where we’re at.”

The Pyramid Stage headline acts for this year's festival are Dua Lipa, Coldplay and SZA, with the genre-straddling PJ Harvey arguably the only artist on the site's main stage who could be classified as a “rock” act, for those who insist on labels.

However, the Louder-endorsed likes of IDLES, Fontaines D.C., Voice of Baceprot, High Vis, Yard Act, NewDad, The Last Dinner Party, Problem Patterns, Kim Gordon and Psychedelic Porn Crumpets either played, or are due to play, across the site from June 28-30. 

Back in May 2019, Metal Hammer's Merlin Alderslade saluted the Glastonbury team for finally "embracing" metal, as the organisers had made space in the iconic Shangri-La fields, two years previously, for the Earache Records-curated Scum stage, which saw performances from Napalm Death, Ho99o9, Hacktivist, Wormrot and more.

Last year's event, meanwhile, featured a main stage headline set from Guns N' Roses on June 24, Queens Of The Stone Age topping the Other Stage bill on June 25, a 'secret' set from Foo Fighters, and appearances from Nova Twins, Manic Street Preachers, The Hives, The Hu, Maneskin, Viagra Boys and more. 

• How to rewatch Glastonbury 2024: No matter where you are

Although the Saturday afternoon crowd at The Woodsies Stage thins out after an all-timer of a performance from Kneecap, those that do stick around are treated to another unique version of punk rock, in the form of London-based quintet High-Vis.

If you’ve ever wondered what Oasis would have sounded like if they were part of the 80’s Washington DC hardcore scene centred around Dischord Records, this band have you covered. High Vis are all punk rock energy, grit and bounce melded with the indie guitar tone and flair for massive vocal hooks that The Stone Roses or The Happy Mondays could throw up at their peak.

The result is superb. Not only do High Vis have a strong back catalogue, with tunes like Talk For Hours, from 2022's excellent Blending album, surely a Top 10 single in an alternate universe, but they're also gearing up for a bright future, with the vital, biting Mob DLA, released earlier this month, the first taste for their forthcoming, as-yet-unannounced third record. They also, very evidently, have personality, charm, heart and passion in abundance. Liverpool-born vocalist Graham Sayle appears almost overwhelmed by the occasion, thanking the receptive audience over and over, and opening up about his struggles with mental health, how he feels his disabled brother has been left to rot by a system he clearly despises, and how important DIY punk rock has been to him.

A hardcore scene veteran, Sayle isn't going to get carried away with this one-off contact with a festival which sits right at the centre of the British music industry. “We usually play pubs... and we’ll go back to playing pubs” he shrugs at one point. If there’s any justice in the world, that won’t be the case for too much longer, but then High Vis know as well as anyone that this life isn't always fair, just or egalitarian.  They already have dates in Europe, Australia and America on the docket before the year is out: go see for yourself why these underground heroes are going places.

• How to rewatch Glastonbury 2024: No matter where you are

With very little in the way of pure heavy metal at this year's Glastonbury, the sight of three teenage Indonesian girls being one the sole representatives could be looked at as an example of tokenism by cynics. If you're among that number, think again, because Voice of Baceprot easily justify their position on the Woodsies Stage, with a fantastically powerful, and often genuinely moving, set of passionate old school metal.

An impressively large and intrigued crowd gather early in the morning to see the band, and that curiosity has visibly morphed into proper excitement 45 minutes later. The reasons are clear: firstly all three members of VOB have mastered their instruments way beyond their years, bassist Widi Rahmawati doing a mean impression of Steve Harris, galloping up and down her fretboard with impressive dexterity: even a late-set drum solo, standardly the ultimate momentum killer, by Euis Siti Eisyah garners huge roars of approval.

The real MVP though is vocalist/guitarist Firda Marsya Kurnia, who manages to bawl out gorgeous, soaring vocal lines whilst also ripping out riffs that KK Downing and Glenn Tipton at their peak would be proud of.

This is a band that are passionate about the causes they talk about in their music, and even though there is an obvious language barrier, the eco friendly and anti-war sentiment seems to hit harder thanks to the unique perspective they bring. But, even if you choose to ignore that side of the band, this is as rip-snorting a set of Priest, Maiden and Sabbath-inspired metal that you’re going to get this weekend at Glastonbury. The fact that it's delivered by these three individuals just makes it all the more remarkable.

By the end of the set Firda is in tears.

“This is the best gig ever!” she screams, clearly overwhelmed, as Woodsies roars their appreciation. You’d be a stony hearted cynic to disagree.

• How to rewatch Glastonbury 2024: No matter where you are

Considering that they largely communicate in Gaeilge (Irish), only released their debut album Fine Art a fortnight ago, and that it’s 11:30 in the morning when they take the stage, the fact that the crowd in attendance for Kneecap's Glastonbury debut spills far outside of The Woodsies tent is incredibly impressive.

“Fucking hell! What are you all doing here? Go to bed!” shouts Mo Chara (Liam Óg Ó Hannaidh), one of the groups two MC’s, alongside Móglaí Bap (Naoise Ó Cairealláin). In a year where a lot of the big draws are fairly mainstream, family-friendly and cuddly, Kneecap bring a sense of legitimate danger and aggression to Glastonbury, The fast-rising West Belfast trio are, unquestionably, the lairiest band you’ll see at this year's festival, slagging off everyone from the British royal family to shite sniffer dogs (on the self-explanatory Your Sniffer Dogs Are Shite, from their first mixtape, 2018's 3CAG) in their bouncy, boom-bapping electro hip-hop.

In less-capable hands, their staunchly aggressive political rhetoric could be po-faced, but Kneecap somehow manage to be hilarious company, even with the  truly terrifying, balaclava-wearing DJ Próvaí (JJ Ó Dochartaigh) in their ranks. At one point they start a circle pit by pointing out one bloke's daft hat and demanding that he starts it, then mug off the “OAP’s moping at the back”.

By the time they finish with a storming run through the brilliantly instantaneous H.O.O.D - an early single, not included on Fine Art, but a key track in their upcoming biopic - Belfast's beastly boys have the packed tent eating [bricfeasta] out of their hands. This feels like the beginning of something very special.

Good luck to whoever has the job of keeping them sober for their 1:30am set on the Shangri-La stage...

As the setting sun settles in a glowing haze over Glastonbury's Park stage, the ground becomes slowly infiltrated by fans in flowing frocks, Fleetwood Mac T-shirts and fairy wings; these are Aurora Aksnes' people.

“Aurora for me is what a pop star should be,” Bring Me The Horizon frontman Oli Sykes recently told NME, “what the next wave of pop stars should look like; someone that has the songs, but is a real person who dares to speak what they believe in, who gives a shit about the world.”

She may not draw the day's biggest audience, but the Norwegian singer-songwriter’s effect on the congregation gathered for her is immediately profound, the atmosphere shifting to intrigue under her curious presence, as her excitable face appears on screen in a slightly-jarring sunflower-shaped star.

Fairy-footing her way onto the stage in a bellowing ice-blue skirt, she makes her entrance sprinkling compliments over the front row with her Disney-like sweetness, before breezing into the emotive opener Some Type Of Skin from the newly-released album What Happened To The Heart? For many, today's set is a chance to hear her new tracks live for the first time, and what tracks they are: the Kate Bush-coded When The Dark Dresses Lightly producing twirling arms from the crowd during its waggish, thumping chorus, while the hypnotic opening lines of A Soul With No King call to mind Fleetwood Mac’s Big Love, and Starvation’s dance club-beats offer an entirely new element to her more art pop-centric sets.  

Throughout the performance, Aurora’s angelic yet powerful voice is startlingly consuming, and it’s hard not to get swept up in the emotion of it all, especially when she offers a dedication to the children of Palestine and those who spend their lives suffering with secret inner turmoils. In another striking moment, before the jaunty Cure For Me, she waves the Pride flag and declares, “We don’t need a cure for who we are!”. 

The 28-year-old singer never spends too long veering into the darkness and troubles of the world, however, reminding us all to stay positive with her marvellous sense of humour - at one point, she even pretends to flash her breasts to the crowd with a mischievously wicked grin. Elsewhere, she compares the ‘unnatural’ feeling of singing in front of people to shitting in public, as she welcomes everyone to “enjoy what they see.”

For her set's closing track, the uplifting Giving In To Love, Aurora spins and prances, running across the stage like a pixie in flight, before including her band in a final bow and thanking them for being so excellently part of what she does. 

Though deserving of a far bigger audience (albeit that it did slowly build as the set progressed), those in attendance experienced something very special here. Something whimsical, powerful, soul-stirring and even a little batshit, her eccentric talents a modern echo of greats such as Kate Bush and Stevie Nicks, her performance is undoubtedly one of the best sets of the festival's first day. 

R.E.M. arrived at for their Worthy Farm debut in 1999 on the back of one of the most uncertain periods in their history – well, apart from when they actually split up a decade or so later, anyway. Their drummer and emotional rock Bill Berry had quit after the release of 1996’s New Adventures In Hi-Fi and remaining members Michael Stipe, Peter Buck and Mike Mills had wondered whether they could continue. They did, with Stipe famously reasoning that “a three-legged dog is still a dog, it just has to learn to run differently”. Glastonbury 1999 was where the world was about to find out if the trio could still gallop with the best of them.

There had been a few one-off shows in the run up to it – their first post-Berry record Up had been released the previous October – and their European tour had begun the week before but there was nothing as high-profile as a headline slot at the world’s most famous festival. With former Beck drummer Joey Waronker joining them behind the kit, they knocked it out the park (or farm). It was this writer’s first ever Glastonbury and what a way to see it in – R.E.M’s performance was a glorious, triumphant set that pulled from their rich history with euphoric renditions of Losing My Religion, Everybody Hurts, Man On The Moon et al as well as lighting the way forward. From the moment the swaggering groove of opener Lotus kicks into gear, all was reassured. One of the biggest bands in the world were still one of the best bands in the world.

Speaking on R.E.M.’s official website a few years ago, Stipe looked back on the show as a line in the sand for the Athens, Georgia trio. “I think it was maybe a moment for R.E.M and the UK where we had kind of been forgotten or pushed aside by younger bands,” said the frontman, “and that was a particular moment at Glastonbury where I think we pulled ourselves back to the front of the line and actually proved, ‘This is what we’re capable of. It was a great show for us.”

R.E.M. returned to Somerset just a few years later, headlining again in 2003. “I felt triumphant every time we played Glastonbury,” Stipe recalled. “The band really stepped up. It’s such a beloved and legendary event that whatever stars are aligned for us personally and as a group, we managed to show the best of ourselves at each of the shows we played there.”

The four original members of R.E.M. recently reunited for a one-off performance at their Songwriters Hall Of Fame induction. Watch them kick off their second imperial phase by digging into their inaugural Glastonbury set below:

This week, Glastonbury Festival returns for another huge few days of music, madness, fun and frolics. It's also packing one of the festival's most eclectic and interesting lineups ever, with everyone from pop royalty like Dua Lipa and the Sugababes mixing it up with rock heavyweights such as Idles, The National and Fontaines DC, not to mention dance icons Justice, Jungle, Faithless and Fatboy Slim (of course) and hip hop trailblazers including Little Simz, Danny Brown and Noname. Where else this summer are you going to get Coldplay, Bob Vylan, Heilung and Basil Brush in one weekend?! Don't forget to check out our handy guide on how to watch Glastonbury 2024.

With all that in mind, what better time to take a trip down memory lane and remember those iconic Glasto sets across the years that have helped to define the festival as the biggest and most celebrated in the world? From its relatively humble beginnings in the 70s to its edgier 90s years and all-conquering modern incarnation, no festival knows how to make headlines - or, indeed, headliners - like Glastonbury. These are the 13 greatest sets in its fifty-plus year lifespan.

The Smiths (1984)

More than a decade had passed since the birth of Glastonbury Festival, and the music scene that it represented in the early '70’s had moved on some way as we reached the mid-point of the 1980’s.

Not that these changes were particularly reflected in the line-up of the festival, with the 1984 bill featuring jazz legends Fela Kuti and Dr. John and new wave hero Elvis Costello headlining. But, halfway down the bill on the Saturday, Michael Eavis had booked a band that would give the festival the lightbulb moment it needed, leading to its refusal to stagnate ever again.

The Smiths only had one album at this point, their self-titled  debut, released in February of that year, but already they were becoming cult-like, a magnet for frustrated and disaffected youth. No one quite knew what was going to happen when Morrissey and Johnny Marr led the Manchester quartet out that day, but their ten-song set seemed to be a siren for young people to appear from nowhere and turn the Pyramid Stage from a docile field of hippies into an pogoing indie disco.

By the time a triumphant Hand in Glove closed the show, a full-blown stage invasion was happening. The festival would never ignore the zeitgeist again.

Orbital (1994)

Glastonbury’s relationship with dance music wasn’t an immediately happy one. Michael Eavis has openly admitted he didn’t care for the style, and when a series of free parties started springing up on site around the time that the UK rave scene was being vilified as public enemy number one in the media, a sense of lawlessness that was the antithesis of Glastonbury’s purpose caused all manner of headaches.

But when the Criminal Justice Act bill of 1994 scandalously targeted and criminalised fans of acid house, the festival, rather than shun the genre, showed solidarity and embraced it.

Brothers Phil and Paul Hartnoll, aka Orbital, were installed as NME Stage headliners that year and proceeded to perform a set that has gone down as a kind of EDM big bang for festivals the world over.

Not only was the duo's hypnotic set of euphoric beats rapturously received, it showed that dance artists could compete with the traditional guitar band set up, opening the door for The Chemical Brothers, The Prodigy, Moby, Fatboy Slim and more to become an integral part of the festival's fabric.

Perhaps even more importantly though, the booking was a statement of political intent, one that defied the government's heavy-handed and discriminatory stance. It offered solid proof that the anti-establishment principles which gave birth to the festival were still alive and well.

Pulp (1995)

When The Stone Roses pulled out of their 1995 headline slot at the last-minute, after guitarist John Squire broke his collarbone and a shoulder blade falling off a mountain bike, Glastonbury was in urgent need of a replacement to close the Pyramid Stage on the festival's Saturday night.

On the face of it, Pulp, indie journeymen who had been plugging away for the past 15 years, and had only just begun to experience crossover success with their 1994 album His ‘n’ Hers, may have seemed like an underwhelming alternative to the mercurial Mancunians.

But the Sheffield band had a pretty huge ace up their sleeve, having just released what would become their definitive anthem; the arch pop of Common People. So big a hit was the song, that Glastonbury took a punt on the band as headliners, and Pulp repaid them with the performance of their career.

Suave, self-depreciating, charmingly geeky and yet blessed with the kind of charisma that you couldn’t take your eyes off, frontman Jarvis Cocker wonderfully conducted the crowd through his band's brilliantly odd, distinctly British, working class, guitar pop anthems. The reaction when the first notes of Common People’s disco throb begin, just after Cocker has read out his weekly shopping list by way of farewell, is spine-tingling stuff.

It elevated Pulp from cult favourites into one of the biggest bands in the country and turned Jarvis into a national treasure. One of the all-time great feel-good stories of the festival's history. 

Radiohead (1997)

By 1997, BritPop had been a national obsession for a few years, and that summer's Glastonbury line-up reflected that. But, although no one knew it at the time, the rug was very much about to be pulled out from underneath the movement.

Two weeks before the festival took place, Radiohead released their third album Ok Computer. Installed as Pyramid Stage headliners on the festival's Saturday night, the Oxfordshire band put on a performance that was so good it arguably contributed to changing the entire landscape of popular music in Britain.

Rather than coming out with a bang in an attempt to immediately grab attention, Radiohead teased out the opening of their set with the slow, delicate Lucky. It seemed a risk to start a first ever festival headlining set with a song placed as track 11 on an album that came out just 12 days earlier, but it immediately marked Radiohead out as the antithesis of the zeitgeist.

From there the Glastonbury audience was held rapt, becoming hypnotised by the band ran through a set of songs that sounded completely unique, utterly advanced and totally alien. Take a look at Thom Yorke wailing along, his body flinching and juddering, trying to keep in rhythm with his band as Johnny Greenwood’s iconic solo during Paranoid Android rips out of the Pyramid Stage PA, it’s a truly transcendent moment.

Unquestionably one of the greatest sets in the history of live music, raising the bar to near impossible standards.

David Bowie (2000)

Michael Eavis once described David Bowie as one of the three greatest singers of all time, alongside Elvis and Frank Sinatra, and Bowie hadn’t rocked up at Worthy Farm since its second iteration back in 1971, so this one was always going to be a bit special.

Let's be honest, there is a more than a touch of revisionism when discussing Bowie these days; during the late '80s and into the '90s he wasn’t being lauded as a forward-thinking visionary in quite the same way as he is now, with albums from that period like Earthling and Black Tie, White Noise getting a lukewarm reaction upon their release. This performance, though, did as much as anything to re-cement Bowie’s place at the very pinnacle of popular culture, as he ran through a greatest hits set that reminded the entire world of his undoubted genius. Also, the warmth with which the veteran performer later spoke about his experiences at the festival was evidence of just how hallowed even the biggest artists considered this site to be.

Watching the set back today, the mass sing-along during Heroes, Life on Mars or Under Pressure are positively life affirming, but don’t ignore Bowie ending his set on a fantastic version of I’m Afraid of Americans, a nod to his thirst to remain relevant and never sink into the nostalgia quagmire. 

Amy Winehouse (2007)

Everyone in the music industry knew that Amy Winehouse was a talent long before this performance blew her stratospheric. But Glastonbury 2007 is the moment where everyone could see that Winehouse was more than just a gifted, enigmatic vocalist; she was a true one-off, destined to be one of the finest artists that Britain has ever produced.

Less than a year earlier, her second album Back To Black had received plaudits from pretty much every corner of the music world, but as she stepped onto the Pyramid Stage for her early afternoon slot on the festival's Friday, it felt like everything that made her so special became amplified for the entire world to see.

There’s just something so brilliantly unique about Winehouse here; slim, petite but lacking the airs and graces of a typical diva singer, she wipes the mud from her shoes on her backing curtain, before shuffling on and effortlessly belting out opening track Addicted. From there on in, it’s a greatest hits set with a few covers - Sam Cooke’s Cupid, The Specials Hey Little Rich Girl and Toots & The Maytals Monkey Man - thrown in for good measure. Great as they are, though, nothing really can compete with the awe-inspiring performances of You Know I’m No Good and Rehab, the pure soul and pain that glides so effortlessly from her mouth showing an artist at the peak of her powers.

As enigmatic as any artist on this list, Winehouse only ever performed at Glastonbury once more after this. At this point she’d doubtless have been a headliner, making her 2007 peak even more of a bittersweet pill to swallow. 

Jay-Z (2008)

When Oasis’ Noel Gallagher scoffed that “Glastonbury has the tradition of guitar music...I’m not having hip-hop at Glastonbury, it's wrong,” after it was announced that Jay-Z was to headline the Pyramid Stage in 2008, he might have been speaking as an out-of-touch, grumpy, old curmudgeon, but he wasn’t alone in his thinking.

Even back in 2008 the internet loved a pile on, and the purists' ire was keenly felt, with many traditionalists happily jumping onboard the outrage train. How dare Jay-Z take a place on the bill usually reserved for legendary artists such as... er...Travis and Stereophonics...? Seems silly now, doesn’t it? Because those words could not have been more emphatically rammed down the throats of the detractors, as the New York rapper provided one of the all-time iconic Glastonbury moments by walking out to one of the biggest crowds seen in years, guitar in tow, and began to giggle his way through a sarcasm-laced cover of Wonderwall, before launching into an awe-inspiring mash up of 99 Problems and AC/DC’s Back In Black. As intros go, it might just be the best ever.

From there on in Jay couldn’t fail, drawing on one of the most bullet-proof, hit-filled catalogues in modern music, and chucking in snippets of The Prodigy’s Smack My Bitch Up and Amy Winehouse’s Rehab just hammered home the win.

This killer set opened the door for Kanye West, Beyonce, Stormzy, Dave and others to storm the festival in later years, and make anyone who ever questioned hip-hop's place at Glastonbury again look exceedingly daft, at best.

Metallica (2014)

Save for the odd booking of alt-metal here and there over the years, Glastonbury had never truly embraced heavy metal. Which, considering the festival's reputation as the most musically eclectic on the planet, was quite the source of frustration for some metal fans. It was a huge shock, then, to see Michael and Emily Eavis go from 0 to 100 and book the biggest metal band of all time to close the Pyramid Stage in 2014.

Confusingly, this prospect caused almost as much of a stir as Jay-Z's six years prior, with endless indie no-marks and the same exhausting online commentators lining up to question the booking: as if that were not enough, an anti-hunting group of festival goers created a petition to have them removed due to James Hetfield’s extra-curricular activities. Metallica, as usual, won the day though, mocking the controversy in their set-opening video and playing a set of hard rock and thrash metal that won over even the most sceptical attendee.

In the aftermath Glastonbury would invite Motörhead to perform, and give Earache Records a stage to curate, which saw the likes of Gojira, Napalm Death, Entombed, Venom Prison and Employed To Serve added to the bill. Hard to imagine that would have happened without Metallica kicking the door down. 

Dolly Parton (2014)

The day after Metallica laid waste to the Pyramid Stage a very different, but no less exciting, event took place. The long-established Sunday afternoon legends slot on the Pyramid Stage had boasted some great sets by some huge artists, with Tom Jones, Paul Simon, Neil Diamond, Dame Shirley Bassey and more overseeing mass singalongs over the years. But few, if any, pulled such a crowd, or put on such a heartwarming, good-time, fun-filled set, as country legend Dolly Parton did in 2014.

The consummate entertainer, Dolly knew exactly what was required to make the slot work, and with the gargantuan crowd eating from the palm of her hand, she turned a muddy field in Somerset into a Nashville hoedown in the most effortless way. The fact that she could just casually chuck Joelene out as the third song of the set says it all.

Some artists truly do transcend genre, and Parton is one of music's all-time great characters and songwriters. In terms of matching the energy, and reciprocal devotion garnered by that set, only Kylie Minogue’s emotional and long-awaited performance in 2019 could match an hour of Dolly at her best. It was impossible not to raise a smile. 

Florence And The Machine (2015)

In 2015, Foo Fighters were due to return to Glastonbury for the first time since 1997, to headline the Pyramid Stage. Then just weeks before the show, Dave Grohl broke his leg falling onstage at a stadium show in Sweden and their entire summer tour was cancelled. Just like 20 years earlier, Glastonbury suddenly needed a new headliner, and just like 20 years previously, the artist that stepped in gave the performance of their career.

Florence And The Machine were already a sizeable outfit, having picked up a BRIT award for their 2009 debut album Lungs, but the jump from well-known, indie rock band to Glastonbury headliner is a chasm. And Florence made the jump with impressive ease, drawing from the best of all three of her albums, and throwing in a beautifully poignant cover of The Foos' Times Like These as a nod to her fallen peers, with Dave Grohl later describing her version as being “better than Foo Fighters had ever played it.” By the time the victory lap of You’ve Got the Love and Dog Days are Over came around, Florence had established herself as an all-time festival headlining act.

Stormzy (2019)

When Stormzy stepped out onto the Pyramid Stage to headline the Friday night of the 2019 festival he was 25-years-old, had one album to his name and was the first grime artist to do so. These events alone have to make his set one of the most astonishing achievements in Glastonbury’s history, but the fact that he made it such a spectacle, such a wonderful celebration of the best of black and alternative British culture and such an emotionally moving experience, cements its place amongst the all-time greats.

Beginning with a video of Jay-Z giving him advice about what to expect from the festival, which was a lovely little call-back, Stormzy walked out in a Banksy-designed, Union Jack stab vest, railed against the Tory government, then brought out members of the Black Ballet company, a full gospel choir, fellow UK grime artists Dave and Fredo and... er... Coldplay’s Chris Martin. In the process, he crowned grime as the definitive British youth culture movement of the modern era.

From an underground musical style from the streets of South London to closing the biggest music festival on Earth, Stormzy’s place at the top of the bill at Glastonbury should give hope to every young musician that the summit can be reached, no matter how stacked the odds are against you. 

Kendrick Lamar (2022)

After an enforced three-year break thanks to a certain global pandemic, Glastonbury returned in style in 2022 with a delayed but all-guns-blazing celebration of its 50 year anniversary. While it wasn't the most hyped or hotly debated headline set in the lead-up to the festival (that honour goes to Billie Eilish), nor the set boasting all the dazzling fireworks and A-list guest spots (hello, Paul McCartney!), Kendrick Lamar's thoughtful, impactful weekend-closer on the Pyramid on the Sunday night undoubtedly stole the show.

Largely powered by clever lighting and interpretive dance (the latter provided by two extraordinary troupes, one all-male and one all-female), the stage show was simple but devastatingly effective, designed to amplify the messages of 21st century rap's most striking communicator. Lamar himself, donning a provocative crown of thorns and offering little in the way of chummy crowd patter, remained a solemn but captivating presence throughout, his bars slick, his delivery intense but crystal clear. It was hip hop on the grand stage at its most powerful.

As blood suddenly and shockingly poured down over his face in the final moments of Saviour, Lamar began repeating one simple but unmistakable message over and over: "They judge you, they judged Christ, godspeed for women’s rights”. Dropping the mic and leaving the stage without so much as a farewell, it ensured Glastonbury's big comeback finished on a surprising but thought-provoking final note.

Elton John (2023)

There was no doubting that Elton John's final UK festival show was going to be something special, but it surely exceeded even the most optimistic of expectations. A dazzling, emotional, hits-stacked set that helped draw the curtain on Elton's touring career in style, an incredible two-hour showing broke records and set a new standard for legacy acts on the Pyramid Stage.

Not only did the set draw the biggest ever viewing figures for the BBC's Glasto coverage - peaking at an incredible 7.6 million views - but it drew the biggest live crowd the Pyramid had ever seen, a humungous, singing, swaying, dancing, flare-waving army that looked like something out of a particularly fabulous Lord Of The Rings scene. After intense rumours of appearances from Dua Lipa and Britney Spears, Elton instead largely used his time to spotlight younger artists in the form of Jacob Lusk, Stephen Sanchez and Rina Sawayama - a classy act that spoke volumes of the Rocket Man's passion for great music above all else.

From an inevitable but emotional tribute to George Michael to the welcome surprise inclusions of Pinball Wizard and Are You Ready For Love, it was a near-flawless waltz with one of the UK's very greatest songwriters. "This may be my last show ever in England and Great Britain, so I better play well and I better entertain you," a visibly moved Elton remarked at one point. That he certainly did. We may never see a Glastonbury set with quite this level of spectacle and gravitas again.

Glastonbury 2024 takes place this weekend. 

HOW TO WATCH GLASTONBURY 2024

Emily Eavis says her dream festival headliner for Glastonbury Festival is Kate Bush.

During a recent appearance on the BBC’s Sidetracked podcast to discuss this year's upcoming event, festival organiser Eavis was questioned by hosts Annie Macmanus and Nick Grimshaw on who her dream booking would be.

In response, she says: "Do you know who I would like to get who haven’t had… Is Kate Bush. I’d love to have her. I’ve put it out there that I’d love to have her.I hope one day."

Unfortunately for Eavis, such a scenario is unlikely to happen, considering Kate Bush has only ever hit the stage for two official tours across her entire career - firstly in 1979 for the Tour of Life, followed by Before The Dawn, her 2014 residency at London’s Hammersmith Apollo.

In spite of this, Eavis remains optimistic and adds: "But you never know I mean Elton was a pipe dream and it happened. 

"But I think you’ve also got to create these new headliners like Dua Lipa. We’re creating this moment for her and that’s really as exciting as anything.”

Elsewhere in the interview, the organiser revealed that Glastonbury Festival will most likely be taking a year off in 2026, stating: "We are due a fallow year. The fallow year is important because it gives the land a rest, and it gives the cows a chance to stay out for longer and reclaim their land.”

She continues, “I think it’s important, I think it gives everybody time to just switch off and the public as well. Then you kind of go away for a bit and it feels lovely when you come back. And I think it’s quite good not to be seen to be cashing in.”

Glastonbury Festival will return to Worthy Farm, Somerset this year on June 26-30, with Dua Lipa, Coldplay, and SZA headlining the Pyramid Stage. 

Check out set times and further information now via the Glastonbury Festival App.

This year’s Glastonbury will take place on June 26-30, with Pyramid Stage headliners Coldplay, Dua Lipa and SZA joined by a huge selection of bands including PJ Harvey, Idles, James, The Last Dinner Party, New Model Army, Kim Gordon, The Breeders and The National.

Hundreds of events will take place across the Worthy Farm site so to help you navigate the sheer amount of artists, stages, on-stage times and more, Glastonbury and Spotify have joined forces for Vodafone’s official Glastonbury app on iOS and Android.

Not only does the app allow music fans to create their own personal festival calendar so you don’t miss anything either at Glastonbury or watching on the BBC, but Spotify integration will provide recommendations of artists to check out based on the user’s listening habits.

Glastonbury organiser Emily Eavis says: “It’s great to launch this integration with Spotify to help festival-goers discover artists playing this year. There are so many amazing acts on the line-up and we're really happy that the app will now help guide people towards the ones they'll love.”

Spotify vice president of global marketing and partnerships Marc Hazan adds: “Spotify reflects and celebrates music culture so this partnership with Glastonbury is the perfect fit. We want to forge deeper connections between artists and fans, and what better way to do that than by teaming up with the world’s greatest music festival. 

"The integration with Vodafone’s official Glastonbury app combines Spotify’s hugely popular personalisation and discovery tools so that users can really elevate their Glastonbury experience to a new level.” 

In addition, Spotify is also home to the official Glastonbury 2024 playlist, which is just one part of the Spotify Glastonbury 2024 hub which is crammed full of content based on this year’s artists.

The Glastonbury app also has an interactive map so you can easily get directions across the festival site - and you can share a pin with close friends so you can all find each other. Here, you'll also find the full festival line-up, a link to Worthy FM radio station and access to Glastonbury's tweets.

There's also travel info, where to buy food and shopping, general advice about what to pack, accessibility information and how and where to recycle cans, plastic, paper, wood and organic waste.

For more information about the BBC’s coverage and how to watch Glastonbury 2024, head over to our dedicated festival hub.

Further reading

• Best festival tents: Get set for the summer of music
• The 10 best performances of Glastonbury 2023
• The 12 best Glastonbury Festival performances ever
• How the Happy Mondays brought chaos to Glastonbury in 1990

With its yurt-friendly rolling hills and ties to spirituality, the Glastonbury festival should be the perfect environment for Mongolian sensations The Hu, but this live album tells a different story. 

They're an electrifying band, but Live At Glastonbury, originally released as a limited edition Record Store Day set, feels heavy-handed, as if they've been instructed to make things 'more metal' and swapped beauty for bombast. 

Maybe it's all that touring with labelmates Megadeth and Five Finger Death Punch, maybe it's the BBC mix, but the morin-khuur (horsehead violin) seems to have ceded ground to overdriven guitar and thudding drums, and The Hu sound less like folk-metal Shamen on the bridleway to transcendence and more like Rammstein. 

A cover of Metallica's Through The Never keeps the thump to a maximum, but even the seal-clubbing sound can't spoil the wonderful Yuve Yuve Yu or Wolf Totem.

Glastonbury organisers have revealed more names and stage times for this year’s festival.

The event will take place between June 26-30 with previously announced headliners Dua Lipa, Coldplay and SZA joined by hundreds of other artists spanning dozens of stages.

It had previously been announced that artists including PJ Harvey, Idles, New Model Army, The National, LCD Soundsystem, Little Simz, Avril Lavigne, Corrine Bailey Rae, Sleaford Mods, Arlo Parks, Lankum and Heilung would be heading to Worthy Farm - with the line-up now bolstered by more must-see artists.

Fresh from releasing their latest album Millennials, Scottish indie outfit The Snuts have been added to Friday’s Other Stage bill, where they’ll join headliners Idles. Meanwhile, on the Sunday, Manchester legends James will take their place on the same stage alongside The National, Nothing But Thieves, The Zutons and Avril Lavigne.

Last year, Foo Fighters played a surprise set at the festival - and there will be another mystery guest joining the Woodsies stage on Saturday, June 29 at 6pm. There’s no indication who it could be, with the official listing simply stating it’s TBA.

A full list of artists, events and stage times has been posted to the official Glastonbury website.

In addition, it’s also been announced that the official Glastonbury app in partnership with Vodafone will launch later this week which will let you map out your personal festival line-up so you won’t miss out on your favourite artists.

Glastonbury 2024 tickets sold out incredibly quickly when they hit the market, but if you missed out, the BBC will have rolling coverage on the event across BBC iPlayer and BBC Sounds. Coverage starts on June 10, leading you through the festival and beyond. The BBC also recently revealed the launch of the brand new Glastonbury Channel II.

Glastonbury co-organiser Emily Eavis said: “We’re incredibly proud of our ongoing partnership with the BBC and always look forward to hearing about the exciting developments in their coverage each year. I’d like to thank Lorna Clarke, Alison Howe and their team for celebrating our festival so brilliantly and for sharing the special spirit of Glastonbury with an audience far beyond these fields. We’re so looking forward to welcoming them back to Worthy Farm in June.”

For more information about the BBC’s coverage and how to watch Glastonbury 2024, head over to our dedicated festival hub.

Further reading

• The 10 best performances of Glastonbury 2023
• The 12 best Glastonbury Festival performances ever
• How the Happy Mondays brought chaos to Glastonbury in 1990

After months of rumour and speculation, Glastonbury Festival has finally unveiled its 2024 lineup, with pop megastar Dua Lipa, neo-soul sensation SZA and Glasto favourites Coldplay headlining this year's event. Joining them on the bill is this year's 'Sunday Legend', country superstar Shania Train, as well as fellow Pyramid Stage acts LCD Soundystem, PJ Harvey, Michael Kiwanuka, Janelle Monae, Keane, Burna Boy, Little Simz, Paloma Faith, Paul Heaton, Olivia Dean, Seventee and Arya Starr.

The Other Stage, meanwhile, will be headlined be Idles, Disclosure and The National, with the likes of The Streets, Avril Lavigne, Confidence Man and Two Two Cinema Club also confirmed. West Holts will see a particularly varied lineup, packing everything from enigmatic folk cult faves Heilung and rap hero Danny Brown to dance heavyweights Jungle and Justice and singer-songwriter Corinne Bailey Rae.

Other artists confirmed to play across the weekend include Jamie XX, Gossip, Sampha, Sleaford Mods, Yard Act, Arlo Parks, Fat White Family, Fontaines D.C., Peggy Gou, Orbital, Ghetts, Faithless, Lankum, Barry Can't Swim and many, many more.

Glastonbury 2024 takes place in its longtime home of Worthy Farm in Pilton, Somerset, from June 26-30. Tickets are long sold out, with a resale of returned tickets expected to happen some time in the near future.

See the full confirmed lineup so far via the official Glastonbury 2024 poster below. Plenty more names are expected to be added as the festival draws near. 

Glastonbury 2023 was a particularly newsworthy edition of the festival, featuring a  triumphant Sunday night headline set from Elton John, believed to be his final ever festival performance, as well as a surprise set from Foo Fighters.

Fancy attending Download, Glastonbury, Reading/Leeds, ArcTanGent, 2000 Trees , Latitude or Bearded Theory festival for free this summer? You can do so if you volunteer to work at the festivals for Oxfam, taking on stewarding, campaigning, or shop volunteer duties for the charity.

Applications to volunteer for summer 2024 festivals - which also include Boardmasters, Boomtown, Isle Of Wight and more - are invited from tomorrow, February 1, on the Oxfam website. The charity is looking for 8,500 volunteers for what it describes as its “biggest summer of festivals yet.”

You’ll also get all the training you need, crew camping, a meal voucher for every shift, hot showers, free tea and coffee, and phone charging.

The charity says: “Oxfam Festival volunteering is a fantastic way to attend your favorite festivals, see some amazing acts, make new friends all whilst supporting Oxfam's work to end extreme poverty around the world.

“You can choose to be a steward providing directions to the festival-going public, checking wristbands, or patrolling campsites and arenas. A campaigner engaging with the public about Oxfam’s work or volunteering in one of our shops providing festival-goers with the latest fashions donated by our amazing supporters.

“You are supporting the festival with the smooth running of the event. In return for providing volunteers to a festival, Oxfam receives funds which help us in our work fighting against poverty.”

The full details are here. Please note that some of the volunteer roles are allocated on a first come, first served basis, while others involve a selection process.

By the end of the 80s, the Happy Mondays had established themselves as the most exciting, dangerous and maverick band in the UK. The Manchester rabble, led by Shaun Ryder, were booked as Sunday night headliners at Glastonbury in 1990 but rather than just close the festival, they brought the curtain down on a whole era for the Worthy Farm event. Basically, Somerset was not equipped to deal with the chaos Shaun, brother Paul, dancer Bez and the rest of the group wrought on an otherwise serene corner of south-west England.

Their weekend began as it meant to go on – the coach transporting the Step On hit-makers to the festival got lost on the way and reversed into a sign reading ‘Glastonbury’. It smashed the back window. As recounted in Simon Spence’s hair-raising tome about the group Excess All Areas, the Happy Mondays had requested over 200 complimentary passes for their entourage but it was not deemed enough, with over a thousand of their Mancunian pals deciding to join them at the festival. The band brought along a printer with them, making copies of their backstage passes and handing them out. “We took all our friends,” Bez later told NME, “and the backstage area was like inner-city Manchester because everybody had an AAA backstage pass that we’d printed.”

A new security team had to be called in, tasked with looking into reports that a large amount of Manchester gangsters were on site robbing tents, selling drugs, “taxing” stallholders and pretty much making Worthy Farm the scene of a mini crimewave. “The festival spun out of control,” Spence writes in his book.

The band themselves were no more harmonious – Shaun Ryder spent the day and a half before stage-time on the tour bus smoking heroin, Bez was ingesting a large amount of acid and Paul Ryder was trying to drink his way out of a weekend of non-stop cocaine taking. Somehow, they pulled it all together for a triumphant performance, but Glastonbury were not happy.

“There were a record 235 arrests at the festival and £50,000 worth of damage,” Spence reported. “As a direct consequence, the following year’s Glastonbury was cancelled.” That wasn’t all – when Glastonbury did return, there was now a massive ten-foot fence erected around the entire site. Glastonbury chief Michael Eavis said there were not welcome back. He did eventually relent, though – after reforming in 2000, Shaun Ryder & co. returned for another, more well-behaved visit. That was for the best, nothing could have lived up to their original stop-off.

Guns N' Roses' performance at last weekend's Glastonbury Festival certainly polarised opinion, with the enthusiasm that greeted the band's two-and-a-half-hour set matched only by bickering about their presence, while a number of TV viewers watching the BBC's live broadcast reported that Axl Rose's voice kept dropping out of the mix.

"They’ve set that microphone lower than my current bank balance," posted Twitter user Jonathon, while Words Of Rich added, "It’s hard to judge Guns N’Roses Glastonbury set. The band sounded fantastic, and when you could hear Axl Rose he sounded great. However when you couldn’t it made it a hard watch. I’m not sure if that’s due to his voice or sound problems."

"The BBC's sound mix for Guns N' Roses is terrible," wrote Jon Sheasby. "The greatest live band I've ever seen, and all you can hear is Slash's guitar and Frank's drums. Axl, Duff, Richard, Dizzy and Melissa are all buried in the mix. How do the BBC f**k it up so bad, year after year?!"

Another Tweeter, Rik Henderson, reported similar problems, saying, "Watching GNR on an OLED with Ambilight and in UHD is great, but I wish they’d stop cocking about with Axl’s mic. The mix is all over the place." 

Now a spokesman for the agency representing Guns N' Roses' has responded to the reported problems, telling Wales Online that the host broadcaster was responsible for the issues people had hearing Axl's voice.

"Axl was in top form last night," the agency said in an email. "We have dug deep into the matter, and it appears the broadcast had issues being played on certain TVs like UHDs. This was an unfortunate issue that the mix played through these TVs sounded so poorly; however, it was not the band’s fault but the BBC's."

Meanwhile, in a social media sequel to Get In The Ring, the 1991 song in which Axl Rose explicitly called out some of the band's critics, Guns N' Roses have tweeted the names of two journalists who wrote unfavourable reviews of their Glastonbury performance.

"It would take a lot more hate than you," posted the band, apparently in reference to reviews that appeared in the The Telegraph and The Independent.

Guns N' Roses' next show is in London's Hyde Park on Friday (June 30). Full dates below. 

Guns N' Roses: The World Tour 2023

Jun 30: London BST Hyde Park, UK
Jul 03: Frankfurt Deutsch Bank Park, Germany
Jul 05: Bern BERNEXPO, Switzerland
Jul 08: Rome Circo Massimo, Italy
Jul 11: Landgraaf Megaland, Netherlands
Jul 13: Paris La Defense, France
Jul 16: Bucharest National Arena, Romania
Jul 19: Budapest Puskás Arena, Hungary
Jul 22: Athens Olympic Stadium, Greece

Aug 05: Moncton Medavie Blue Cross Stadium, NB
Aug 08: Montreal Parc Jean Drapeau, QC
Aug 11: Hershey Hersheypark Stadium, PA
Aug 15: East Rutherford MetLife Stadium, NJ
Aug 18: PNC Park Pittsburgh, PA
Aug 21: Boston Fenway Park, MA
Aug 24: Chicago Wrigley Field, IL
Aug 26: Nashville GEODIS Park, TN
Aug 29: Charlotte Spectrum Center, NC
Sep 01: Saratoga Springs Saratoga Performing Arts Center, NY
Sep 03: Toronto Rogers Centre, ON
Sep 06: Lexington Rupp Arena, KY
Sep 09: St. Louis Busch Stadium, MO
Sep 12: Knoxville Thompson-Boling Arena, TN
Sep 15: Hollywood Hard Rock Live, FL
Sep 17: Atlanta Music Piedmont Park, GA
Sep 20: Biloxi Mississippi Coast Coliseum, MS
Sep 23: Kansas City Kauffman Stadium, MO
Sep 26: San Antonio Alamodome, TX
Sep 28: Houston Minute Maid Park, TX
Oct 01: San Diego Snapdragon Stadium, CA
Oct 06: Indio Powertrip Festival, CA
Oct 08: Sacramento Aftershock Festival, CA
Oct 11: Phoenix Chase Field, AZ
Oct 14: Climate Pledge Arena Seattle, WA
Oct 16: Vancouver BC Place, BC

Tickets are on sale now.

The world's most famous music festival may be renowned for its sprawling size, hosting 210,000 people over its many fields, but what really makes Glastonbury the hottest ticket in town is its smorgasbord of sound, welcoming artists from all backgrounds, genres and sonic philosophies. Over the years, Glastonbury has seen everyone from Dolly Patron, David Bowie and Radiohead to Pulp, Metallica and Amy Winehouse take on the Farm, and this year served yet more sets that'll doubtless go down in history.

So, with that all said, here are the 10 performances that defined Glastonbury 2023.

Elton John

On a weekend littered with historic sets and unforgettable moments, it really did seem like Glastonbury saved the best until last. Elton John's first (and last) Glasto performance was the stuff festivals are made for, pulling the biggest crowd in the festival's history for an emotional celebration of one of music's greatest songwriters. John even made sure to tip his cap to the next generation of potential future headliners, Rina Sawayama and Stephen Sanchez amongst the special guests to come out and join the party. 

Foo Fighters

Even given that everyone and their mum knew weeks in advance that 'The Churnups' were really the Foos in disguise, the Worthy Farm favourites were greeted ecstatically as they strode out on stage in the blazing afternoon sunshine on Friday. The rockers showered Glasto with classic hits such as The Pretender and All My Life, as well as new, heart-wrenching songs from the recently-released But Here We Are. While the UK may not be the Foo Fighters' official home, seeing the band return to Glastonbury to a field full of elated people singing out into the sun, arm in arm, felt very much like they were returning to where they truly belong.

Queens Of The Stone Age

"Let's dance!" smirked Josh Homme before ripping into a stage-shakingly heavy Go With The Flow. He might have more accurately proclaimed, "Let's dance, jump, mosh and bang our heads off", because Queens Of The Stone Age's festival-closing set on The Other Stage produced the wildest scenes of the whole weekend. Competing against a legendary Elton John set they may have been, but Queens didn't so much hold their own as make it clear that they play second fiddle to absolutely no one, producing one of The Other Stage's all time great performances in the process.

The Last Dinner Party  

The Last Dinner Party may have only one officially-released single to their name (with another to come very soon), but that didn’t stop hoards of early-risers heading out to  Woodsies to watch their slot at 11:30am on Saturday morning (which is pretty early, as festival clocks go). In fact, following their set, the stage’s compere announced that they managed to pull in the largest crowd for that opening slot that Glastonbury’s ever seen, which is quite the feat. The band swirled in white flowing frocks to a sound that’s one-part Siouxsie Sioux, another part Queen; wonderfully thespian and richly-indulgent, stealing the show before the day had barely begun.

Weyes Blood 

After the festival had spent half a week in blinding heat, Pennsylvania’s Weyes Blood ushered in a soft breeze just in time for the clouds to turn to grey and the atmosphere to settle down into a wistful hum. Blending chamber pop, psychedelic folk and soft rock, Weyes’ voice melted out into the skies like a lower-pitched Kate Bush, as she skipped and pirouetted in an ivory cape, orbited by a stage full of tall candles. A performance of deeply mesmeric and tear-inducing celestial beauty.

Nova Twins 

With energy beginning to wane on Glastonbury’s final day, London duo Nova Twins fired out a feast of earth-shattering riffs to remind us all that the party was far from over. As Georgia South’s buzzing bass supplied an underbelly of meaty warps to vocalist/guitarist Amy Love’s herculean riffs, together they conjured a sound that felt perfectly at home on a platform as large as The Other Stage. As they leapt together while kitted out like glossy video game characters, spitting and punching out every line and lick with a militant, almost-animated precision, Nova Twins looked and felt as rehearsed as a band three-times their senior, but still powered by youthful spunk, grit and determination. 

Skindred

If you've somehow managed to miss Skindred on the festival circuit, either you don't know how to party, or you're one of those people that frequent their weekend by being zonked out in their tent. For some time now, the Welsh reggae-metallers have been cementing themselves as royals of the summer scene, boasting a catalogue of chaotic bangers that can send dormant crowds into unruly pits; it was long overdue that they were finally called to claim their place at the world's biggest music festival. Despite sound issues cutting out any noise from the guitar for the first few songs, the band powered through, whirring up Glastonbury's far east corner into the late hours. Benji Webbe proved exactly why he's the orchestrator of this whole thing, garbed like a glittering heavy metal king with all the quick-witted humour of a court jester. It was non-stop fun from a band who quite frankly, never miss. 

Rina Sawayama

While her nu metal drops and calling out of 1975 frontman Matt Healy made the headlines, alt pop provocateur Rina Sawayam's whole set was simply magic, from its sparkling celebration of queerness to its delightfully over the top theatrics. None of it would matter if Rina didn't have the songs to back it all up, however; luckily the likes of STFU!, Beg For You and This Hell are all top tier pop bangers, beefed up by a killer live band and given extra thrust by Rina's effortless command of a stage. Headlining Woodsies might have been the last time we see her indoors at this festival.

Los Bitchos

Melding Latin flair with fuzzy psych-rock and and woozy surf guitar, instrumental quartet Los Bitchos provide the perfect soundtrack for a sunny, boozy afternoon - which is exactly what they did when they rocked the Park Stage on Friday. Dishing out cuts from their excellent 2022 album Let The Festivities Begin! as well as recent EP tracks, they were as charming as they were propulsive, setting the tone for a weekend of great weather and even greater music in style.

The Hu

Bringing some Mongolian folk metal to West Holts on Sunday afternoon, The Hu provided both one of the heaviest and one of the most unique sets in recent Glastonbury memory. Sparking mosh pits, jigs aplenty and even some singalongs from those that have been rinsing the band's two studio albums, the impressive-looking eight-piece created an atmosphere that felt somewhere between a pre-battle rally and a medieval party. They even threw in a Metallica cover for good measure.

• How to rewatch Glastonbury 2023: Relive all the action