For many music fans it’s the most stressful few minutes of the year: the online scramble to secure Glastonbury tickets. And while 2025’s event is set to be as oversubscribed as ever, that stress will at least be given a shiny new focus as Glastonbury overhauls its ticket-buying process.
Previously, hopeful ticket-buyers would frantically refresh the festival’s ticket sales page in the hope of being one of the lucky ones to get through to the option of purchasing.
This year, after the usual registration to be able to purchase tickets, they will now visit a holding page before the start of the ticket sale, “at least a few minutes before the sale opens” according to organisers. Once the sale begins, each person “will randomly be assigned a place in a queue to access the booking process”.
Then, “when you reach the front of the queue, you will be asked to enter the registration number and registered postcode for the lead booker and up to five other people for whom you are attempting to book tickets. You will have 10 minutes to complete this page before your session expires.”
Organisers warn buyers not to attempt multiple purchases: “Running multiple devices or tabs simultaneously to attempt to access the website may lead to your IP address being blocked, preventing you from buying a ticket. The same applies to sharing cookies and QueueIDs”. The latter term refers to a bit of code denoting a successful ticket buyer, which has previously been used in attempts to jump the online queue – a much discussed but dubious tactic amid the yearly ticket sale.
“Refreshing the page, using multiple tabs or many devices can look like suspicious behaviour and can harm your chances of getting through by triggering anti-bot software,” the organisers add.
Registration for tickets closes at 5pm on 11 November. Tickets bundled with coach travel go on sale first, at 6pm GMT on 14 November. Another tranche of general admission tickets, with no travel conditions attached, go on sale at 9am on 17 November.
The ticket price has jumped by nearly £20 compared with 2024, from £355 to £373.50 (plus a £5 booking fee). It’s the latest in a steady series of price increases since the festival returned in 2022 after Covid – in 2019, a ticket was only £248.
Ticket-buying has been a much disputed topic in recent years, with many consumers expressing anger over fees, demand and the opacity of the purchasing process.
In August, millions of people attempted to buy tickets to Oasis’s reunion gigs in the UK and Ireland, with fans put into a queueing system similar to the one planned by Glastonbury.
Ticketmaster’s dynamic pricing model – deployed at times of high demand – then jolted the cost of standing tickets from £148.50 to £355.20. Fans were outraged, and the culture secretary Lisa Nandy, the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority, and the European Commission all promised examinations of the practice. Oasis stopped using dynamic pricing for tickets in other legs of their world tour, and Glastonbury does not use it.
Other desperate Oasis fans were swindled in online scams, with a Lloyds Bank study finding that each of the hundreds of victims lost an average of £346.
Once the Glastonbury ticket sale is complete, thoughts will turn to the lineup, with the headliners and a first wave of acts expected to be announced in early 2025. Eminem, Sam Fender, Olivia Rodrigo and Bruce Springsteen are among the artists currently being mooted in the rumour mill.
Only one thing is certain: Oasis have definitively ruled themselves out of all festivals, saying their world tour will be the only place to see them in 2025.