Glastonbury 2025: From Olivia Rodrigo to Neil Young, How the UK’s Biggest Festival Keeps Reinventing Itself

The Glastonbury Festival 2025 lineup was always going to carry extra weight. Worthy Farm opened its gates from 25–29 June 2025, knowing this would be the last edition before the scheduled fallow year in 2026.

Across five days and a reported 210,000 people, Glastonbury 2025 put three very different headliners on the Pyramid Stage – The 1975, Neil Young & the Chrome Hearts and Olivia Rodrigo – alongside a deep bill that ran from Pulp and Rod Stewart to PinkPantheress, Jorja Smith and AJ Tracey.

It was the most Glastonbury combination imaginable: heritage vs. hyper-modern, nostalgia icons sharing poster space with TikTok-era stars.

Heritage vs. hyper-modern: what the Glastonbury Festival 2025 lineup says about now

On paper, the Glastonbury Festival 2025 lineup looks like three different festivals stitched together:

• Heritage & legends: Neil Young headlining Saturday with his band the Chrome Hearts, Rod Stewart taking the traditional Sunday Legends Slot, and veteran acts like John Fogerty, Burning Spear, The Selecter and Supergrass scattered across the bill.

• Indie nostalgia: The 1975 finally getting their first Pyramid headline slot, plus Pulp, Kaiser Chiefs, Biffy Clyro, The Libertines, and The Maccabees on the Park Stage.

• Hyper-modern pop & internet acts: Olivia Rodrigo closing Sunday night, Lorde playing a secret Woodsies set, PinkPantheress, Jorja Smith, AJ Tracey, Doechii, RAYE, Greentea Peng, Girl in Red and more sitting across Woodsies, West Holts and other stages.

The result felt like a live conversation between eras: you could watch Neil Young play songs older than most of the crowd, then walk a few hundred metres and see Olivia Rodrigo debut tracks designed to explode on Reels and TikTok.

The headliners: three versions of Glastonbury

The 1975 – internet-era indie goes “heritage”

On Friday night, The 1975 finally took the Pyramid top spot, years after earlier Glastonbury appearances in 2014 and 2016.

For a band who built their identity through Tumblr aesthetics, streaming-era rollouts and extremely online fandom, their headline set felt like a graduation:

• A guitar band, but with pop choruses big enough to travel all the way to the back of the hill.

• Stage design and visuals built for both BBC shots and fan phone screens.

They’re now at the point where songs that once felt niche – “Somebody Else”, “Love It If We Made It” – land like modern standards.

Neil Young & the Chrome Hearts – the elders of the hill

Saturday belonged to Neil Young, who confirmed he would headline 2025 after briefly criticising the festival’s BBC partnership earlier in the year. Backed by his band the Chrome Hearts, Young closed the Pyramid with a set that reached back decades.

In the crowd, you could see literal generations: people who’d grown up with his records bringing their kids to watch. In a year when much of the lineup skewed young, it was a reminder that Glastonbury still honours rock elders properly – not as nostalgia acts, but as artists with something current to say.

Olivia Rodrigo – Gen-Z pop star in a Glasto coronation

On Sunday night, Olivia Rodrigo made her Pyramid Stage headliner debut, having last appeared at Glastonbury with a much-talked-about Other Stage set in 2022.

Her 2025 set looked and felt like a coronation for Gen-Z pop:

• Songs born in the streaming and TikTok era scaling up to 200,000 people singing along on a Somerset farm.

• Hooks and lyrics written like diary entries, but now echoed back by a pan-generational crowd.

Reports also highlighted a surprise guest appearance from The Cure’s Robert Smith, folding classic alt-rock into her set and underlining the night’s heritage-meets-now feeling.

Beyond the Pyramid: where the future of Glastonbury lives

The real proof of Glastonbury’s reinvention sat deeper down the poster:

• Woodsies hosted Four Tet, PinkPantheress, Scissor Sisters (reunited), Lorde (secret set), Jorja Smith, AJ Tracey and St. Vincent – a tight cross-section of club culture, internet pop and art-rock.

• West Holts balanced heavy bass and new voices: Doechii, Maribou State, BadBadNotGood, Denzel Curry, En Vogue, Greentea Peng, Kneecap, Bob Vylan and more.

• The Park featured cult and critical favourites: Anohni and the Johnsons, Caribou, Haim, Kae Tempest, Girl in Red, Lucy Dacus, Japanese Breakfast, plus The Maccabees reunion.

For artists, a Glastonbury slot now shapes album campaigns: many acts time new music, visual content and tour announcements around their Worthy Farm appearance, knowing BBC’s extended coverage – live streams of multiple stages and 90+ hours of content on iPlayer – will beam them worldwide.

Crowd style: British mud-core meets boho 2.0

Glastonbury 2025’s fashion story was exactly what you’d expect: functional British weather gear fused with nostalgic boho and indie sleaze.

Style coverage from titles like Vogue, Glamour, Marie Claire and RUSSH picked out everything from waxed jackets, dad jeans and Hunter boots to floaty dresses, leather jackets and 2000s-style belts and scarves, worn by both festival-goers and celebrities helicoptering in for the day.

At ground level, the Glasto look in 2025 boiled down to three pillars:

• Waterproofs that photograph well – khaki and black jackets, oversized trenches, practical boots.

• Noughties revival – denim minis, layered belts, boho skirts, skinny scarves, clearly influenced by Kate Moss’s iconic Glastonbury archives and even new Zara capsule collections inspired by that era.

• Sparkle after dark – sequins, metallics and statement sunglasses that come out once the sun sets over the Pyramid.

It’s not the most polished festival in the world, but that’s the point: you’re dressing for BBC cameras, Instagram stories and ankle-deep mud.

Sustainability: “Love the farm, leave no trace”

Glastonbury has spent years building a sustainability reputation, and 2025 continued that push.

• The festival bans single-use plastic drink bottles, encouraging everyone to bring reusable water bottles and use hundreds of free tap points on site.

• Waste partners and green charities highlighted recycling systems and reusable cups, describing Glastonbury as one of the most sustainability-conscious major festivals.

• Official messaging in 2025 once again pushed the “love the farm – leave no trace” ethos, asking people to take everything home and avoid dumping tents and gear.

For Niche readers, the real story is that “premium” festival culture in the UK now includes how you treat the land: the right boots and the right bottle matter as much as the right outfit.

Glastonbury starter pack: how to survive Worthy Farm in 2025

If you’re planning to do Glasto when it returns after the fallow year, this is your starter pack based on 2025 guides and packing lists.

1. Where to stay

• Standard camping: Classic fields = cheapest and closest to the action, but also the loudest.

• Pre-pitched tents / tipis / glamping: More expensive but good if you’re coming from abroad or don’t want to haul gear.

• Off-site + shuttle / taxi: Some people sleep in nearby villages or Airbnbs and commute in daily – easier on the back, harder on the vibe.

  
  

2. What to wear

• Footwear:

  • Waterproof boots or wellies are non-negotiable – one shower can turn fields into a swamp.

• Layers:

  • Base: T-shirt or thin knit.

  • Middle: fleece / sweatshirt.

  • Outer: waterproof shell or waxed jacket.

• Accessories:

  • Hat (sun or rain), sunglasses, small cross-body bag, reusable water bottle.

3. Essentials to pack

• Festival ticket (obvious, but people forget).

• Tent, sleeping bag and either an air bed or roll mat.

• Reusable water bottle and reusable cup.

• Portable power bank (or two) and charging cables.

• Earplugs + eye mask (the sun and the bass start early).

• Head torch or small flashlight.

• Basic toiletries, meds, plasters, hand sanitiser and toilet roll.

• Snacks you can eat at 3am without cutlery.

  
  

4. How to survive the mud (and the crowds)

• Check the weather every morning and adjust – switch between trainers and boots as needed.

• Use bin bags as emergency ponchos, clothes sacks or makeshift seats.

• Pace yourself: it’s a marathon, not a sprint. Schedule at least one “slow morning” to wander the Green Fields or smaller stages.

• Remember thousands of people are doing this for the first time every year – you’re not the only one who gets lost between the Pyramid and West Holts at 1am.

  
  

Why Glastonbury 2025 still matters after the lights go out

In the bigger picture, Glastonbury 2025 proved that the festival can hold multiple identities at once:

• A place where Neil Young and Rod Stewart can anchor rock history.

• A launchpad where Olivia Rodrigo, PinkPantheress and Doechii speak directly to the streaming generation.

• A fashion mood board and a sustainability test case, all on the same stretch of Somerset farmland.