Dangerous overcrowding has made the UK’s biggest music festival an “accident waiting to happen”, an ex-employee has warned. Glastonbury Festival attracts over 200,000 ticketholders to Somerset each year with a huge performance lineup and countless things to do, from arts and crafts to theatre and circus acts. But the reliably popular annual event could be playing with fire when it comes to safety policies, according to a former festival manager, who has warned that overcrowding from the event’s thousands of attendees could quickly turn into “a disaster”.
The anonymous insider, who reportedly had a senior managerial role last year, told the Mail on Sunday: “Worst case scenario, people are going to die. I think we are going to have some massive issues this year.” He added that widespread drug usage combined with the giant crowds was a dangerous combination – especially after the Worthy Farm site boosted its capacity by 7,000 in 2022.
In just a matter of weeks, hundreds of thousands will head to Somerset for this year’s Glastonbury, set to feature headline sets from Neil Young, Olivia Rodrigo, Charli XCX and Rod Stewart.
Last year’s festival was marred by overcrowding at some of the venue’s smaller stages, which led to areas being closed off to prevent crowd crushes.
The Sugababes, who also performed at the 2024 festival, were forced to shut down their set in 2022 after an area surrounding their small stage was overrun with thousands of people, sparking safety concerns.
The whistleblower said requests for emergency assistance related to drug-taking occurred at a rate of every 15 to 20 minutes last year and questioned how the festival had “survived this long without a major disaster”.
“The jewel in the UK’s crown is actually something of a ticking time bomb,” he added.
The ex-employee also said bosses were afraid a major incident would kick off on Thursday night of the 2024 festival, as Dua Lipa finished her show on the Pyramid stage and thousands of festivalgoers prepared to flood the much smaller Levels stage, where Charli XCX was performing – although no such incident ultimately occurred.
A spokesperson for Glastonbury said it uses a “system of robust and dynamic crowd-management planning”, aided by a 500-person team to ensure “that at all times … crowd safety is at the forefront of everyone’s minds”.
