Sit in any UK pub for long enough and eventually you’ll come across an old rocker reminiscing about sneaking into Glastonbury by climbing over a wooden stile, or whatever, back in the 90s, to catch an addled glimpse of Pulp or Sinéad O’Connor. But while that sounds like a genuinely great time, gone are the days when getting into the legendary festival was anything less than a military operation: the antithesis of rough and ready rock’n’roll.
While Glastonbury has been stratospherically divorced from its hippy roots for decades, today’s announcement about 2027’s tickets could hardly be less groovy, baby. On sale from 4 October (but only if you’ve pre-registered by 25 September), nine full months before the festival itself, just getting in requires a level of forward planning (not to mention cut-throat admin, spreadsheets and frantic WhatsApps to manage the ticket-buying process) surely at stark odds with what’s supposed to be a party.
But it’s the price that’s really outrageous – because with the headliners not even announced yet, 2027’s tickets cost more than £400. Sure, everything’s relative – the price is only a few quid more than the last batch in 2025 – but in the middle of a cost of living crisis, when people arguably need to blow off steam more than ever, charging them the cost of a month’s groceries for the privilege is frankly insulting.
Coupled with the festival’s heavy crowds, corporate sponsors and the eye-watering cost of on-site food and drink, free love and music for all has well and truly disappeared.
Without sounding like one of those pub bores I mentioned, it’s worth remembering where we started: back in 1970, when the first iteration of the festival was held, tickets cost a pound (about £20 today). In 1971, the organisers drew up a manifesto setting out its environmental and spiritual ethos, based on the idea of Glastonbury as a place for the “expression of free-thinking people” – hard to argue that that noble aim has stood the test of time, with 2027’s attendees expected to drop hundreds of pounds on a ticket without even knowing what it’ll get them.
Glastonbury has a history of genuine experimentation, but tickets that cost half a month’s rent make it hard to justify taking much of a chance. The big acts have to play it safe, and while there’s less pressure on emerging artists, why should fans have to shell out more than £400 to discover something new or support a personal favourite?
The current organiser Emily Eavis has spoken before about the rising cost of staging the festival, citing Covid and Brexit; this year, rising energy and infrastructure costs have already been suggested as justification for the latest hike. But just because something gets more expensive, it doesn’t mean to say it deserves to keep increasing ad infinitum.
Arguably, what has happened to Glastonbury is a perfect case study for the mechanism by which capitalism absorbs counter-culture – while initially, an injection of cash is not just welcome but productive, that sweet spot soon gives way to inertia, eventually bloating the original beyond all recognition. One day, the pendulum will swing too far, and we’ll wonder what on earth we were all doing, dropping hundreds of pounds to see Harry Styles play Watermelon Sugar while clutching a £20 burrito.