Glastonbury Festival

Music and activism found each other in 1981; Glastonbury has been donating its profits to good causes ever since.

After sporadic festivals through the 1970s, the festival returned in 1981 with a renewed sense of purpose. Michael Eavis partnered with the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND), and the festival became the CND Festival. This was the year Glastonbury established its tradition of donating significant profits to charitable causes. The lineup was headlined by New Order, Hawkwind, and Aswad, and around 18,000 people attended. The marriage of music and activism would define the festival's identity for decades to come.

Steel, permanence, and Channel 4 cameras: 1994 was the year Glastonbury stopped being a secret.

The current steel Pyramid Stage was constructed in 1994, replacing earlier incarnations that had been built and rebuilt over the years. Levellers headlined to a crowd that had swelled to around 80,000. Channel 4 began broadcasting highlights, bringing Glastonbury into living rooms across Britain for the first time. The festival was no longer a countercultural secret; it was becoming a national festival.

Radiohead played through rain and chaos in 1997; 90,000 people stayed anyway, and the mud became the memory.

Torrential rain turned Worthy Farm into a quagmire of near-mythical proportions. Cars were abandoned in fields. Wellies were swallowed whole. And yet 90,000 people stayed, danced, and made the best of it. Radiohead's headline set on the Saturday night, performed through driving rain and technical difficulties, is still regarded as one of the greatest festival performances ever. The 1997 mud cemented Glastonbury's reputation: this was a festival where the weather was part of the experience, not an obstacle to it.

The super fence did not just keep people out; it finally let the money in.

After years of fence-jumping that saw actual attendance far exceed ticket sales, a new perimeter fence was erected in 2002. The so-called 'super fence' was a serious piece of infrastructure, and it worked. For the first time, the festival could accurately control numbers and, crucially, ensure that the charitable donations from ticket revenue reflected the true scale of the festival. Coldplay headlined. The era of the 'free Glastonbury' was over, but the festival's finances were finally sustainable.

Glastonbury stopped being somewhere you went, and became something the whole country watched.

The BBC's comprehensive coverage of Glastonbury expanded dramatically, with multiple channels, radio stations, and the iPlayer streaming performances live. The festival became a television occasion in its own right. The Arctic Monkeys, Killers, and The Who headlined, but it was the sheer breadth of BBC coverage that transformed Glastonbury from a festival you attended into one the entire country experienced. Capacity had reached around 177,500.

120,000 tickets sold in half an hour; Britain's favourite festival had long since outgrown the word "festival".

By 2015, Glastonbury had become the most sought-after ticket in British entertainment. The festival sold out in record time, with 120,000 tickets gone in under 30 minutes. Kanye West's controversial headline slot the previous year had proved that Glastonbury could provoke and surprise as well as celebrate. The Foo Fighters, Florence and the Machine, and The Who headlined in 2015, and Emily Eavis, Michael's daughter, was now firmly established as co-organiser, ensuring the family succession.

At 80, McCartney became the oldest solo headliner in the festival's history; some silences, it turns out, are worth the wait.

The COVID-19 pandemic forced the cancellation of Glastonbury in both 2020 and 2021, marking the first time the festival had been cancelled for reasons beyond the usual fallow years. The Eavis family livestreamed performances from Worthy Farm in 2021 to keep the spirit alive. When the festival returned in June 2022, with Billie Eilish, Paul McCartney, and Kendrick Lamar headlining, the emotional weight of the comeback was palpable. McCartney, at 80, became the oldest solo headliner in the festival's history.

From a pound and free milk to £360 a ticket; fifty years on, the queue never shrinks.

Glastonbury 2024 saw Dua Lipa, Coldplay, and SZA headline the Pyramid Stage, with Shania Twain playing the coveted Sunday legends slot. The festival's capacity stood at approximately 210,000, including staff and performers. Tickets, priced at £355 plus a £5 booking fee, sold out almost instantly. More than fifty years after Michael Eavis charged a pound and threw in free milk, Glastonbury remains the festival against which all others are measured.