Glastonbury Festival — Worthy Farm, Pilton, Somerset

The Glastonbury Festival of Contemporary Performing Arts at Worthy Farm in Pilton, Somerset, is the largest greenfield music and performing arts festival in the world, regularly drawing over 200,000 people to Michael Eavis's dairy farm in the English countryside. The first festival took place on September 19, 1970, the day after Jimi Hendrix's death, when 1,500 people paid £1 each to watch T. Rex headline. Since then, Glastonbury has grown into a cultural institution whose Pyramid Stage headliners — from David Bowie (1971, 2000) to Radiohead, Beyoncé, the Rolling Stones, and Kendrick Lamar — represent the summit of the global music industry.

Glastonbury's character is defined by its mud, its size, its political consciousness, and its determined eclecticism. The festival site sprawls across 900 acres and encompasses hundreds of stages, from the main Pyramid Stage to the anarchic late-night areas of Shangri-La and Block9. The Eavis family's commitment to charitable causes — Glastonbury has donated millions to Oxfam, Greenpeace, WaterAid, and others — distinguishes it from purely commercial festivals. The atmosphere combines music, theatre, circus, political activism, and communal chaos in a way that no other festival has replicated.

Worthy Farm is privately owned and the festival typically takes place in late June, with fallow years to allow the land to recover. Tickets sell out within minutes of going on sale. The site is in the Vale of Avalon, with views of Glastonbury Tor, and its setting in the Somerset countryside gives it a mythic quality. Glastonbury is widely considered the greatest music festival in the world.