Background
Rod Stewart was announced at Glastonbury's 2025 teatime Legend's Slot performer on 26 November 2024. Stewart made his only previous appearance at the festival in 2002 when he headlined alongside Coldplay and Stereophonics. A few days later on 29 November, Nile Rodgers accidentally confirmed that he and Chic would be performing at the festival immediately following Stewart's set during his acceptance speech at an awards show held at the Roundhouse in London. When informed that this had not been officially announced, Rodgers joked: "Am I not supposed to give that away? I always say too much." Chic previously performed at Glastonbury in 2017, coincidentally also following from that year's Legend's slot performer Barry Gibb. [3]
On 1 January 2025, Neil Young announced that he would not be performing at Glastonbury 2025 in a statement expressing his belief that the festival was "now under corporate control", referencing their partnership with the BBC. [4] The artist, who had been rumoured to perform but had not been confirmed or revealed by the organizers, released a subsequent statement on his blog two days later that he would indeed be headlining the festival alongside his new band, the Chrome Hearts, remarking that his initial comments had been due to a communication error. [5]
An initial wave of performers, including both remaining headliners, was announced on 6 March 2025. The 1975 headline for the first time after previous appearances at the festival in 2014 and 2016, while Olivia Rodrigo returns to the festival following a notable set on the Other Stage in 2022. Doechii makes her Glastonbury debut headlining the West Holts Stage, while Charli XCX headlines the Other Stage on Saturday. Sunday's Other Stage headliners, The Prodigy, perform at the festival for the first time since 2009, and the first time to the death of their frontman Keith Flint in 2019. [6] [7]
The lineup for the Acoustic Stage was announced on 22 March, headlined by Ani DiFranco, Nick Lowe, and Roy Harper. [8] The stage will also feature a set by The Searchers, in what they have confirmed will be their final performance together. Having formed in 1957, they are considered one of the longest-running bands in history. Discussing the show, singer Frank Allen stated, “The Searchers are finally performing at the greatest music festival of them all. What a way to round off a tour and a career.” [9] The Avalon Stage announced its lineup on 25 March. [10] The West Holts Stage revealed the rest of its lineup on 27 March, including the remaining two headliners Maribou State, and Overmono. [11] The Woodies lineup, featuring headliners Four Tet, Scissor Sisters, and Jorja Smith, was announced on 24 April, with the performance being the newly reunited Scissor Sisters' first appearance at the festival since 2010. [12]
The full line-up was released on 3 June 2025. [13] [14] The bill included three "TBA" secret sets on the Pyramid, Woodsies, and Park stages respectively, and an unknown band billed as "Patchwork" on the Pyramid Stage. [15] The Friday surprise sets were revealed to be Lorde on the Woodsies stage, and Lewis Capaldi on the Pyramid stage. [16] [17] "Patchwork" were ultimately revealed to be Pulp, performing on the Pyramid stage for the first time since their headlining set in 1998, and the first time overall since 2011 where they played a secret set on the Park stage. [18] The final "TBA" set was revealed to be Haim. [19] Deftones were forced to cancel their set on the Other stage due to illness, and were replaced by Skepta. [20]
Coverage and controversies
The BBC announced their presenting team and plans for two months of coverage for the festival on 3 June 2025. This included the usual livestreams of the five main stages, with on-demand sets available for catch-up on BBC iPlayer, along with select live broadcasts on BBC One, Two, and Four. Three visualised episodes of the BBC Sounds Sidetracked podcast also aired. [22] BBC Radio 6 Music was announced as the "radio home of Glastonbury", and was dedicated to coverage of the festival.
In the weeks before the festival, several British politicians, including prime minister Keir Starmer, called for hip-hop group Kneecap to be removed from the line-up. Hours before the show, the BBC announced that it would not broadcast Kneecap's set live, but would make it available on-demand once it had reviewed the performance. [23] The set was broadcast live from a festival-goer's cell phone via TikTok, reaching more than two million viewers. [24] Kneecap led chants of "fuck Keir Starmer" and in favour of Palestine, while the audience waved Palestinian flags. [1]
The BBC did broadcast the live set by lesser-known punk-rap duo Bob Vylan, who played right before Kneecap. The vocalist, Bobby Vylan, led the crowd in chants for Palestine and against Israel's actions in the Gaza war, including “death, death to the IDF”, which ignited a political controversy. According to the Guardian , some see it as valid political speech, but others found it "antisemitic" and "incitement to violence". [25] Prime Minister Keir Starmer described it as "appalling hate speech". [26] Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch called the scene "grotesque". [27] [28] The BBC apologised for what it called "deeply offensive" content and removed the performance from iPlayer. [29] [30] The United States Department of State revoked their visas, forcing them to cancel their planned tour there. [25] British police said on 29 June that they were assessing videos of the performances by Kneecap and Bob Vylan; [24] the following month the police decided not to take further action against Kneecap due to "insufficient evidence to provide a realistic prospect of conviction for any offence". [31]
This page is based on this
Wikipedia article Text is available under the
CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
