How to Get Tickets for Glastonbury Festival

Getting tickets for Glastonbury Festival is famously one of the hardest ticket-buying experiences in Britain — 200,000+ tickets selling out in under an hour, a website that groans under the load, and the annual heartbreak of thousands. I’ve been five times, failed to get tickets twice, and learned the system inside out. Here’s the honest, complete guide — including the routes most people don’t know about.

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Step Zero: Register (Do This Now)

You cannot buy Glastonbury tickets without registering first — and registration closes weeks before the sale. Register at the festival’s official site with a passport-style photo; you’ll get a registration number. Everyone in your group must register individually — you can’t buy for unregistered friends. Registration is free and carries over year to year, so do it now even if you’re not sure you’re going. This is the step people forget, and it’s the most common reason for sale-day failure.

Official source only: Glastonbury tickets are sold exclusively through the festival’s official website (glastonburyfestivals.co.uk) and its authorised partner See Tickets. Any other seller is a scam or a tout — full stop. The festival is vocal about this, and fakes circulate every year.

How to Get Tickets for Glastonbury Festival: Sale Day Strategy

• Know the dates: the main sale is usually early October (coach packages) and early November (general admission), for the following June’s festival. Mark them the moment they’re announced.
• The coach packages sell first (usually a few weeks before general sale) and are easier to get — they include return coach travel from UK cities. If you’re flexible on travel, this is the insider’s route: less competition, same festival.
• Prepare like it’s an exam: registration numbers for everyone, payment card ready, multiple devices on different networks (phone data + home broadband), everyone in the group trying simultaneously.
• Don’t refresh aggressively: hammering refresh can get you bounced. One steady browser window per device, patience, and the queue page doing its thing.
• The deposit system helps: you pay a deposit (£75ish) at purchase and the balance in spring — which makes the upfront cost manageable.
• Have a group plan: decide in advance who’s buying for whom (one successful buyer can purchase up to 6 tickets for registered friends). The first person through buys for the group.

The Resale: Your Second Chance

The official resale (usually April) returns cancelled and unpaid tickets to sale — smaller numbers, same frenzy, but many people succeed here because fewer try. Mark it. Volunteering is the other legitimate route: stewarding, litter-picking and bar work through the festival’s partner organisations gets you in free (with a deposit) — you work shifts but see plenty of the festival. Applications open months ahead and fill fast. Competitions: the BBC, the Guardian and various brands run ticket competitions each year — long odds, but someone wins.

What doesn’t work: touts (Glastonbury tickets have the buyer’s photo and registration — touted tickets are cancelled at the gate, and you’ll be turned away), “VIP packages” from unofficial sellers, and begging on social media (admirable persistence, near-zero success rate).

Ticket Prices and What You Get

A full weekend ticket runs around £340–£360 (plus booking fee) — which sounds steep until you divide it by five days of music, theatre, circus, comedy, and the best festival site in the world. It’s genuinely good value per hour of entertainment. Budget another £150–£250 for food, drink and travel depending on your standards. For the broader festival landscape, our free concerts and festivals guide covers the cheaper alternatives, and live gigs near you keeps the music going year-round.

Surviving the Festival: The Veteran’s Guide

Getting the ticket is the hard part; surviving five days is the skill. Camping: arrive early for the good spots (near the main paths but not on them — the 3am foot traffic is real), bring earplugs and an eye mask (the festival never sleeps, but you must), and a tent you can actually stand up in. Feet: the site is enormous — you’ll walk 20,000+ steps daily. Broken-in boots, blister plasters, and dry socks (sealed in bags) are non-negotiable. Food and drink: the festival food is excellent but pricey — budget £30–£40 a day, or bring supplies for breakfasts. Water points are free and plentiful — bring a refillable bottle. The schedule: plan the must-sees, but leave gaps — the best Glastonbury moments are the accidental ones (the secret set, the 2am jazz bar, the stone circle at sunrise). Phone: the network collapses under 200,000 people — arrange meeting points and times in advance, the old-fashioned way. And pace yourself: it’s a marathon, not a sprint. The veterans nap in the afternoons. The rookies burn out by Saturday.

If You Don’t Get Tickets: The Alternatives

Missing out stings, but the festival summer is bigger than one weekend. The BBC coverage is genuinely superb — multiple stages streamed live on iPlayer, the highlights programmes, the atmosphere beamed to your sofa (see the BBC’s Glastonbury pages). Other festivals: Green Man, End of the Road, Bestival, Latitude, the local ones — many argue the smaller festivals are better (shorter queues, friendlier crowds, lower prices). Our free festivals guide lists the ones that cost nothing at all. Next year: the resale, the volunteering route, the coach packages — this guide doesn’t expire. And the secret: some veterans prefer the BBC weekend — no mud, no queues, every headline set, your own bathroom. It’s not the same, obviously. But it’s not nothing. See you in the fields next year — or on the sofa, which is also fine.

The Coach Packages: The Insider’s Route

Worth expanding on, because it surprises people: the coach packages aren’t a consolation prize — they’re strategically the easiest legitimate route to Glastonbury. They go on sale before the general sale (usually October), include return coach travel from dozens of UK cities, and face significantly less competition because many buyers don’t consider them. The price is the ticket price plus the coach fare — often working out cheaper than ticket-plus-train booked separately. You travel with fellow festival-goers (the coach is practically a pre-party), arrive together, and skip the parking nightmares. If you live near one of the departure cities and can be flexible on travel times, this is the route the veterans quietly recommend. Same festival, same fields, fraction of the sale-day stress.

The takeaway: register now, try the coach sale first, have the whole group trying on sale day, and mark the April resale. Glastonbury tickets reward preparation — the organised get in, the hopeful mostly don’t. The BBC’s Glastonbury coverage is the next best thing if you miss out — their iPlayer sets are superb.