- Revellers are gearing up for Glastonbury Festival, as gates open to Worthy Farm this week.
- This year’s headliners include SZA, Coldplay and Dua Lipa, with Shania Twain performing in the “Legends” slot
- There is still rampant speculation about who could be the secret band performing at Woodsies stage on Saturday evening.
- But with how big the festival is, is it officially bigger than Coachella - or even Vatican City?
It’s two sleeps until the gates open to Worthy Farm as Glastonbury Festival 2024 at 9am on June 26 2024 - headlined this year by Dua Lipa, SZA and Coldplay.
The sprawling festival site, estimated to be 900 acres, annually sees nearly 500,000 revellers call Worthy Farm their home for a few days, as the area once again becomes a miniature city with activities available outside of merely seeing your favourite band.
This had us thinking - is Glastonbury bigger than, say, Coachella Festival, its North American counterpart that also has earned a reputation for being “the” festival du jour in North America where many celebrities have been spotted throughout its glow-up in recent years?
Well, we were in luck, as you will be too if you’ve ever asked yourself just how big Glastonbury Festival is compared to other festivals. Geoffrey Prytherch developed the Glastonbury Map overlay, which allows users to enter a location and see just how much land mass Glastonbury covers compared to Leeds, Reading or in our cases below smaller countries.
So to settle the debate - is the Glastonbury Festival bigger than Coachella?
5. Download Festival
Download Festival was a continuation of the iconic “Monsters of Rock” festival which regularly took residency at the Donington Park Race Track. Headlined this year by Queens of the Stone Age, Fall Out Boy and Avenged Sevenfold, the location that has played home to Metallica, Slipknot and Sepultura in the past has a land mass estimated to be 300 acres - a third the size of Glastonbury’s reported size | Geoffrey Prytherch
6. TRNSMT Festival
TRNSMT Festival, scheduled to take place this year from July 12 to July 14, is estimated to take up around 65 acres of Glasgow Green and surrounding areas. That means that this year’s performers including Liam Gallagher, Sugababes and Garbage will be performing on a site 825 acres smaller than Glastonbury. | Geoffrey Prytherch
7. Camp Bestival Dorset
Going back up the festival scale though, Camp Bestival in Dorset takes place on the grounds of Lulworth Castle. Originally built as a hunting lodge to entertain aristocracy and royalty, an estimated land size of 120 acres is said to be occupied for the festival, which this year sees the likes of Paloma Faith, Hak Baker and The Magic Numbers perform from July 25 to July 28. | Geoffrey Prytherch
8. BST Hyde Park
Another smaller “festival” site, but owing to BST Hyde Park being a series of events across the summer in London, they can be excused for not having the biggest festival site compared to other festivals here. The size of Hyde Park is a whopping 350 acres (12 Wembley stadiums), but the festival space itself, where Robbie Williams is scheduled to perform his only UK date in 2024, is said to only use 50 acres, allowing the rest of the park to still be used by the public. | Geoffrey Prytherch