Glastonbury is reducing its capacity for 2025 - but how will the festival actually change for fans?

Glastonbury Festival is just days away, and things could look a little different year with attendee capacity reportedly cut, and certain areas of the Worthy Farm site expanded.

It comes after multiple reports of overcrowding in recent years with ticket sales thought to have increased from 203,000 to 210,000 post-pandemic. A rather hefty jump from the 1,500 people who attended the first ever Glastonbury Festival in 1970.

However, Emily Eavis, the festival's organiser, insists that they've cut capacity by "a few thousand" for 2025 to see the impact it has on traffic flow - not least because many of 2024's attendees reported safety concerns, particularly around Avril Lavigne's unexpectedly popular set on the Other Stage, with crowds forced back into the campsite behind, and bottlenecks on the surrounding entrances.

Later in the weekend, DJ duo Bicep were forced to pause their set on the IICON stage for 15 minutes due to overcrowding, and the Sugababes had fences around West Holts shut off to prevent the same thing from happening.

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The news comes just weeks after a whistleblower dubbed the festival a "ticking time bomb".

“Worst-case scenario, people are going to die, I think we are going to have some massive issues this year", the anonymous staff member told The Mail.

“How has it [Glastonbury] survived this long without a major disaster?

“It's got to be a mixture of luck and a mixture of good will, the jewel in the UK's crown is actually something of a ticking time-bomb.”

Despite this, Eavis says none of the 250 staff asked spoke up when asked if they felt the festival was overcrowded that year.

“I was like, [that’s] interesting because there’s a lot of talk, some people think that it was,” she said on the BBC's Sidetracked podcast.

Adding of the reduced crowd sizes this year, she said: “It’ll be interesting to see just how that affects the dynamics on site."

Eavis also says that security can generally predict where the big crowds are going to be, based on the Glastonbury Festival app, which allows users to 'add' artists to their own personal line-ups and share it with friends.

The festival has also bought extra land behind Shangri-La in the infamous late-night South East Corner, a place which usually gets shut off or implements diversions to enter and exit due to its busy nature when the main acts finish. But rather than filling it with more installations, it'll be used as an empty space with murals for people to go and relax away from the chaos.

Olivia Rodrigo, The 1975, and Neil Young are all headlining, and all expected to be busy too.

Taking learnings from last year, The Other Stage, which is expected to draw huge crowds once again for Charli XCX's performance, has been extended into the campsite behind, to allow for more punters to enter.

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Eavis revealed that, since the Covid pandemic, people tended to move “more in a herd” and so her goal was to emphasise that there are “like 10 routes to anywhere”.

The changes are welcome for festival goers, some of which have noted they felt "worried" moving around the 1,100-acre site.

"Parts of the festival last year made it so overwhelming, especially in the walk ways - there was so much queuing for things as well which detracts from the festival", one Glastonbury attendee, Simon, told Indy100, noting that London Grammar and Barry Can't Swim on The Park stage were particularly worrisome points for him, and that the sound from the stage didn't travel well with such a big crowd.

He adds: "I don’t think they’ve reduced the festival by a huge amount, but I’m interested to see if it does have a positive effect, along with the certain areas being expanded, and whether that will relieve any of the crowding."

Is this a new era for the greatest festival on earth? Only time will tell, but with organisers seemingly willing to listen to fans, this can only be a good start.

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