Glastonbury Festival likely to take fallow year in 2026, organiser says

Glastonbury organiser Emily Eavis said 2026 may be the year where the world-famous festival is skipped so the land on Worthy Farm has a chance to recover

Glastonbury Festival will likely take a fallow year in 2026 in order to allow for the land to rest, organiser Emily Eavis said.

The festival at Worthy Farm in Somerset usually takes place four out of every five years, with the fifth year reserved for rehabilitation of the land.

Ms Eavis told the BBC’s Sidetracked podcast the gap year would allow “everyone time to switch off” and also give the Somerset farm’s cows a “chance to be out for longer and reclaim their land”.

The last official fallow year was 2018, but the festival was also cancelled in 2020 and 2021 because of the COVID pandemic and had “enforced fallow” years.

Her comments come amid news of an app being launched to help festival-goers find friends and their tents more easily.

The app will have a map to help festival-goers find their way around the 1,000-acre grounds as they can drop pins on locations such as their tent and where they parked their car, and set meeting points to regroup with friends before performances.

It will also recommend a top 10 line-up of performing artists based on the user’s Spotify profile.

Asked if she had plans for the 2025 line-up, Ms Eavis, whose father, Sir Michael Eavis, founded the festival on his Somerset farm back in 1970, said: “Not yet, we are talking to people.

“The thing with line-ups is, you think it’s looking one way and then it changes. So at the moment, I would say no, but I have a vague idea in my head of who is going to be doing it next year.

“Then we might do a fallow year after that – we are due a fallow year.”

She added: “The fallow year is important because it gives the land a rest, and it gives the cows a chance to be out for longer and reclaim their land.

“And it gives everyone time to switch off. And I think it’s quite good not to be seen to be cashing in. At the best time when we could just rake it all in, to go ‘no’ is so important – that ethos – now more than ever.

“Sometimes you just need to calm it all down and come back with a renewed excitement and enthusiasm.”

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While Ms Eavis’s father is still involved in the world-renown festival, his daughter and her husband Nick Dewey take on the majority of the organisation.

Pop superstar Dua Lipa, American singer-songwriter SZA, and British band Coldplay are set to headline the world-famous Pyramid stage this year.

There will also be “just a few minutes of silence” as performance artist Marina Abramovic appears on the festival’s main stage to call for peace.

“That’s going to be a beautiful moment,” Ms Eavis said.