The ultimate guide to UK festivals

Looking for the best festivals in the UK? From Glastonbury to Edinburgh Fringe, across England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, each year there are over 975 festivals – something for every wristband-reveller. You could be dancing to Beyonce in Somerset while down the road someone is celebrating Hampshire’s finest cress.

This guide covers the top UK festivals, including ticket prices, locations, camping tips and what makes each festival unique. We're talking the hall of famers, the ones you’d leave the toilet queue for.

Before we get started, some quick fire festival quiz questions:

UK festival FAQs

1. What is the biggest festival in the UK? Glastonbury, it's massive.
2. What are the best UK festivals for students? Boardmasters, Reading and Leeds and Creamfields are popular with the younger crowds.
3. What month are UK festivals? UK festivals are all year round but most UK music festivals take place between May and September, to make the most of the summer sun.
4. Are UK festivals camping events? Most UK music festivals offer day tickets and weekend tickets where camping is included in the price. If you don't like being woken up by random conversations along the footpath then offsite accommodation is an option.

Best UK music festivals

Arguably the best thing to happen to UK fields since the 1650 agricultural revolution. Music festivals are the UK’s flatbread and butter. From day festivals in city parks to long weekenders, you know it’s summer in the UK when the party shirts come out and the trains smell of stale deodorant. Here are the headliners:

Best UK festival for international travellers: Glastonbury, Somerset

Let’s get Big Daddy G out the way first. From humble beginnings, it’s now the megalith of music festivals. Taking place over five days, it hosts around 200,000 people on 1500 acres of farmland. You will get lost. You will discover something new. You will wake up in the stone circle one morning, surrounded by drummers and druids. It’s just what happens at Worthy Farm. Best bit, it’s the one place you might see an artist you thought you’d never see. And performers really go for it at Glastonbury. Because it’s Glastonbury. It’s where Jay-Z sang Oasis’ Wonderwall, Sir Paul McCartney dueted with Dave Grohl, and David Bowie delivered one of the greatest sets of all time in a Moroccan bath robe.

• Month: end of June
• Average ticket price: £370 for 5 days
• Average size: 210,000

Best electronic music festival: Boomtown, Winchester

Think Mad Max meets Moulin Rouge, with huge sound systems. Boomtown is an immersive set, designed for those who want to take their brain to another dimension…for a few days…whilst listening to bass. It’s a little city in its own world. There’s a job centre, an inconvenience store, police station (Boomtown Bobbies). And people really embrace it. The fancy dress is on point. It’s wild, it’s friendly, it’s a bucket-hatted celebration of soundsystem culture. Warning though, you will lose hours in the fairylight forests, but that’s ok. It’s what you’re there for.

• Month: end of August
• Average ticket price: £330 for 4 days
• Average size: 60,000

Best indie and alternative festival: End of the Road, Wiltshire

If you’re more into guitars and picnic blankets than basslines and 4am beers, then End of the Road in Wiltshire is the cul-de-sac for you. The music is a good mix of indie, folk and alternative. The people are friendly and ‘just happy to be away for the weekend’. And the setting is a gorgeous Victorian pleasure garden, surrounded by woodlands. There’s comedy, literary talks, art workshops – it’s got it all. Just be prepared to set an alarm for that cup of tea – the folk crowd love an early morning brew.

• Month: August/September
• Average ticket price: £270 for 4 days
• Average size: 15,000

UK’s best arts and culture festivals

Despite the images of tanked up Brits lighting fireworks from their backsides during football world cups, they are actually a fairly cultured bunch. The UK has a history of great thinkers, creatives and weirdos. And they love a festival…

Best UK festival for students: Edinburgh Fringe, Scotland

Officially the largest arts festival in the world. Also the weirdest. You’ll be invited to shows in people’s basements and bathrooms. There’ll be buffoonery and bafflement. Often at the same time. There’ll be nakedness, clowns, musical madness. Some shows are truly awful – like ‘will-they-notice-if-I-leave-now’ awful. Others are incredible. Some are indescribable. You never quite know what you’re going to get until you’re sitting on that bean bag in someone’s garden shed watching a man peel an orange for 70 minutes. Best thing is to approach with an open mind and go wherever the dram/free tickets take you.

• Month: August (25 days)
• Average ticket price: Many shows are free. But accommodation can be pricey.
• Average size: 700,000 unique visitors

Best literary festival: Hay Festival, Wales

Wholesome and high-brow, Hay Festival in Brecon Beacons National Park brings together all those who are good with words – writers, comedians, poets, storytellers, those that were on their school’s debate team. There are conversations with prize-winning authors, stand-up shows, live music performances, political and social discussions, workshops and classes. It’s like immersing yourself in a Sunday Supplement. You’ll need to book an extra day off work just to decompress from all the enlightening moments you’ve had.

• Month: May/June (10-11 days)
• Average ticket price: Events are typically £15-25
• Average size: 250,000

Best camping festival: Boardmasters, Cornwall

Put your pawn away, we're not talking chess. This is more Point Break than Queen's Gambit. Boardmasters began as a surf competition in 1981. It's now a celebration of music, beach culture and surfer-chic. There are big names, big waves and big nights. And you're camping right by the water – nothing cures a hangover like a morning swim in the Celtic Sea.

• Month: August
• Average ticket price: £300 for 5 days
• Average size: 58,000

UK's best day festivals

When the sun's out and the weekend beckons, there is nothing better than going completely off-grid at a city day festival...no phone signal, no problem. We'll meet you front left speaker!

Best day festival in South England: All Points East, London

Taking place in East London's trendy Victoria Park, All Points East is relatively new to the festival scene. It might not have many years under its belt but its got an impressive phonebook – the XX, the Strokes, RAYE, Doechii, Barry Can't Swim – they've all inconvenienced the East London locals who can't believe their lunchtime lattes are disrupted on two weekends of the year.

• Month: August
• Average ticket price: £70
• Average size: 40,000 people

Best day festival in North England: Africa Oye, Liverpool

Africa Oye is the UK’s largest celebration of African music and culture. It’s free and takes place in Sefton Park in Liverpool. As well as giving a stage to African and Caribbean performers, it cooks up delicious food, puts on workshops for all ages, and, if you want a rum cocktail, follow the trail of discarded coconut husks until you find your free-pouring friend. The whole weekend is about bringing cultures together, celebrating the richness of Africa and eating your weight in jerk chicken. If you don’t leave here with a few new dance moves under you loosened belt then you’re doing something wrong.

• Month: June
• Average ticket price: FREE
• Average size: 80,000

UK’s best food and drink festivals

We know what you’re thinking, British food…why is anyone celebrating that? Well, ok, British food is more than a battered bit of fish with mushed-up peas on the side. Sure, it is that. But it is also mouldy cheeses that hum more than your dad’s sandals, hard-boiled eggs in sausage meat and…we’ve lost you haven’t we? These food festivals will get you back on side…

The best festival for cheese: Abergavenny Food Festival, Wales

The Glastonbury of grub, this celebration of food is full of local and international treats. From local cheese, honey and bread to Sri Lankan street food and tacos, you won’t go hungry in Abergavenny. There are chef demonstrations, tasting sessions, foraging tours, live music and heated debates – can you reheat rice? How do you cook the perfect amount of pasta? Is coriander gross? And probably some more refined topics too.

• Month: September
• Average ticket price: £30 for 2 days
• Average size: 30,000

The best food festival overall: Big Feastival, Cotswolds

What creative mastermind came up with that name? Blur’s Alex James, that’s who. Musician turned cheesemaker. And as you’d expect from a festival designed by a bassist, there’s plenty of music as well as food. Big Feastival gets big names too. 2025 features Nelly Furtado, Faithless, Travis, Mabel, Daniel Bedingfield – remember him?! It was actually a hot dog eating competition that inspired his hit ‘Gotta Get Through This’. Away from the main stages, hidden in the trees, you’ll find lunch experiences and late night feasts. Even the street food is on another level. Bring a bib and your loosest pants.

• Month: August
• Average ticket price: £170 for 3 days
• Average size: 25,000

The best UK festival for meat: Meatopia, London and Glasgow

Vegans, look away now. Carnivores, rejoice. Meatopia labels itself as ‘the original BBQ festival in the UK’. Prepare yourself for a weekend of charcoal chat. There’ll be live fire cooking from world-renowned chefs, music, workshops, butchering demonstrations and plenty of geeking out over different cuts. The festival even has its own currency – Meatbucks – which you can use to buy meat from the chefs. Everything is sustainably sourced – even the chefs, plucked from their forests with minimal damage to the ecosystem.

• Month: August/September
• Average ticket price: £25 per day
• Average size: 10,000

So, there you have it, and that’s really just the tip of the mudberg when it comes to UK festivals.

Yes, sometimes it rains and sometimes tents get blown into neighbouring fields, but it’s all part of the fun. Get yourself a strong pair of wellies and an efficient pegging system, put on your glitteriest leggings, and start ticking off the UK’s 975 festivals whilst on your UK working holiday