Glastonbury 2025: final preparations underway for the UK's biggest festival
It's an exciting week for music fans up and down the UK
Last updated 23rd Jun 2025
With just days until the gates open, the final preparations are well underway ahead of this year's Glastonbury Festival.
It's the last in a run since after the pandemic, with 2026 confirmed to be a fallow year - which is done to make sure the ground at the site has the chance to recover.
But ahead of all of that, it's an exciting week for literally hundreds of thousands of fans at Worthy Farm - and millions more around the world - as music legends new and old make their way to one of the event's many stages.
This year's headliners feature The 1975, Neil Young and Olivia Rodrigo - whilst there's gaps for a number of elusive secret sets.
You might remember 'The Churnups' from 2023, who turned out to be rock icons The Foo Fighters.
For 2025, one hot-ticket band who's been speculated to take one of these secret slots is Sheffield legends Pulp, having just released a new album.
'More' is their first in nearly a quarter of a century.
But, the band who have just scored a number 1 album - say that the festival weren't interested.
Read more: Glasto 2025: full line-up and opening ceremony details revealed
One band set to perform is Kneecap - a rap group which Sir Keir Starmer has called 'not appropriate'.
The Irish Former Taoiseach Leo Varadkar says he thought Keir Starmer's comments on Kneecap's Glastonbury performance was a 'gag.'
Speaking to The Sun over the weekend, the British Prime Minister said the Belfast rap trio's performance shouldn't go ahead after band member 'Mo Chara' appeared in a London court charged with a terror offence last week.
Leo added 'the rule of the law says the accused is innocent until proven guilty.'
For 2025, Festival bosses say they believe in the power of the individual to ignite hope, spark joy and trigger an avalanche of positive action.
Their new Power Of One campaign aims to harness this hope by highlighting the amplified impact of a few easy personal choices and their potential to bring about a better tomorrow.
They add that small actions taken by one can – when echoed by others – can have an exponential effect powerful enough to drive societal change.
Some examples shared by organisers include:
- Switching off non-essential electrical appliances before you leave which could help save enough energy to power nearly 100 UK homes for an entire year
- Refilling bottles once a day at the festival can help save the CO2e equivalent of driving a diesel car 485,000 miles or around the world nearly 20 times
- By not driving over 5 days, you'd save enough carbon, the equivalent of which would take three mature trees one year to absorb this amount of carbon
Project Servator
Avon and Somerset Police say Project Servator is in full swing ahead of the festival.
They add how specially-trained officers will be joined by colleagues from the British Transport Police, conducting unpredictable deployments across transport hubs in Bristol, before and during Glastonbury.
This operation is designed to disrupt a wide range of criminal activity, with tactics aiming to identify and disrupt hostile reconnaissance – the information gathering a criminal does when planning to commit a criminal act, including terrorist attacks.
Getting there
And this year - like all of them - the roads leading to Worthy Farm will be a busy one.
Bosses say the cleanest ways to travel is by bike and public transport, and over a third of ticket-holders travel to the Festival on coaches, trains or other forms of public transport.
If you're heading on the roads - Travel Somerset is the way to check on the very latest on your travel times.
Bosses at Great Western Railway are also ramping-up their efforts, with free shuttle buses chartered, there to take music fans all the way to the festival from Castle Cary Train Station.
You’ll get dropped off directly outside Pedestrian Gate A, so no long walks from the car parks.
Queuing systems will be in place at Castle Cary and other busy stations to help make your journey as pleasant and smooth as possible.
GWR's luggage advice for Glastonbury is simple: don’t travel with any more luggage than you can carry yourself.
Trolleys, wheelie bins and four-wheeled trucks are not permitted onboard trains or the free shuttle buses from Castle Cary station to the festival site.
The same goes for musical instruments and furniture exceeding dimensions of 30 x 70 x 90 cm – so whether it’s enormous bongos, lengthy didgeridoos or your favourite armchair to lounge in at the festival, they say they've seen it attempted all before.
Bristol Water
Bristol Water’s Water Bar is back at the Festival this week, offering free refills to the 200,000+ festivalgoers heading to Worthy Farm with their reusable bottles – helping to save thousands of single-use plastic bottles from going to waste.
It supports Glastonbury’s long-standing ban on single-use plastic bottles by cutting down on rubbish and promoting sustainable water use – helping to keep the iconic festival at the forefront of green events worldwide.
Susan Davy, CEO of Pennon, said: “Festivals like Glastonbury bring people together – and we’re proud to be part of that by providing something simple but essential: fresh, clean water. Sustainability is core to everything we do, and the Water Bar is just one of the ways we’re making a difference on the ground this summer.
"Providing water to over 200,000 festival goers, crew members, volunteers and emergency services who work together to make this event such a special one is a huge undertaking. I’m proud of each and every one of our teams who are helping to supporting events this Summer.”
It features three taps and is designed to be easily accessible for people of all ages. It will be open daily from 10am to 6pm at Worthy View, and staffed by Bristol Water’s dedicated Engagement Team.
After Glastonbury, the Water Bar will be heading to Keynsham Music Festival and Bristol Pride later this summer.
With tens of thousands of people arriving by car, one motoring organisation has some sage advice when you finally get to the place you'll be leaving it.
Matt Thomas from the AA, says it's a busy time of year for them: "It's not always lost car keys, it's quite often, as we get to the end of the festival, people have lost where their car is.
"It's important people write down the name of the car park, or even better, use the WhatThreeWords app."
Read more: Giant rainbow peace symbol unveiled at Glastonbury
People waiting for the gates to open on Day 1
