Glastonbury 2025: the 7 best moments from Worthy Farm
The best moments from Glastonbury 2025 as the world’s best festival takes a back seat for two years…
Glastonbury is over for another year and boy did the Somerset festival prove it can still deliver the goods. From career defining moments from the likes of Lorde and Charlie XCX to appearances by bona fide legends including Neil Young, surprise sets, emotional returns and more than a little controversy, Glastonbury 2025 had it all.
This year even marked the 90th birthday of Michael Eavis, the owner of the farmland on which the festival takes place. Glastonbury will take a fallow year in 2026 to allow the farm ground to rest, meaning the next festival won’t take place until 2027. If that feels like too long, here are some memories from Worthy Farm to help cheer you up.
Lorde lords it
The first full day of Glastonbury 2025 coincided with the launch of Lorde’s new album Virgin, and behind her trademark moody pout, the New Zealand singer insisted she was delighted to be here. “This is crazy for me,” she said.
Glastonbury’s boiling hot Woodsies tent appeared to induce at least one health scare during the 28-year-old’s performance, the first of the secret sets from across the weekend (Pulp also played a not-so surprise set).
But Lorde rewarded those who’d been queuing since before 9am with an intense performance coupling best-in-class vocals with her charming, free-spirited choreography, delivering her new LP front to back. She did look a little moody throughout her set but that could be down to the sweltering heat: she spent most of the set tucking her t-shirt into her bra in a bid to cool down.
Glastonbury 2025: theatre and circus makes history
Florence Welsh surprise
Florence Welsh made a surprise appearance on the final evening of Glastonbury 2025. The lead singer from Florence & The Machine joined indie band The Maccabees during their headline slot at The Park stage.
Florence sang Dog Days Are Over and performed guest vocals on The Maccabees’ Love You Better. Taking to the stage barefoot, she reminisced about her love for the 2000s indie band, called herself a super fan and asked the packed Park stage to jump throughout her hit single.
Her surprise performance came amid criticism of how this year’s ‘secret’ sets didn’t feel so secret – but there hadn’t been any rumours of a Florence Welsh appearance. News about other surprise acts, including Pulp and Lorde, had spread hours (or even weeks) before they happened.
The Maccabees broke up in 2016 but reformed this year and will be headlining London festival All Points East later in the summer. They didn’t announce any new music during their Glastonbury set, which was packed with hits including Latchmere, X-Ray Vision, Precious Time and The Pelican.
The band, who released four studio albums and were one of the seminal indie bands of the 2000s, released their last LP in 2015. They were clearly emotional about reforming for Glastonbury, and hung around on stage after their set had finished to take in the applause.
Lewis Capaldi is back!
Most Pyramid Stage moments at Glastonbury are euphoric for both performers and punters, but Lewis Capaldi wasn’t able to finish his set in 2023 due to a bout of tourettes. But the 28-year-old made an incredible return to the festival’s main stage to deliver a short surprise set.
Capaldi‘s Glastonbury 2023 appearance was so significant it played a major part in a Netflix documentary exploring his condition. But this afternoon, Capaldi appeared quietly confident as he performed a 35-minute set featuring his biggest hits. He also introduced a new track, Survive.
Walking on to Before You Go from his debut album Divinely Uninspired to a Hellish Extent, he performed a short seven-track setlist. Grace, Hold Me While You Wait and Bruises followed, all from the same 2019 album. Capaldi then introduced the audience to new single Survive about overcoming his issues with tourettes.
Occasionally pausing to chat, Capaldi was typically candid about his condition and two-year break from live shows. He said: “Glastonbury, it’s so good to be back. I’m not going to say much up here today because if I did I might start crying.
“The last two years haven’t been the best for me. It’s been difficult at times. I wanted to write a song that was about overcoming that stuff. This has been my goal, to get back here, doing this.”
Before playing his biggest hit, Someone You Loved, he said: “I couldn’t sing this song two years ago. I might struggle to finish it today for different reasons.”
With the sun beating down on the tens of thousands gathered at the Pyramid Stage, there was a mood of quiet contemplation as he sang the track, which topped the charts in both the UK and the US. Many were in tears, embracing one another as they sang along.
With hundreds of flags fluttering in the wind, lit up by the late afternoon sun, it will be one of the moments repeated thousands of times across social media and on television coverage. Properly inspirational stuff.
Rod Stewart swelters
He might have brought on a litany of surprise guests including Ronnie Wood, Mick Hucknall and Lulu, but the main surprise guest at Rod Stewart’s Glastonbury 2025 Legend slot was the sweltering heat. Thousands took shelter by sitting on the floor, choosing to listen to the set rather than watch it because standing was too overwhelming. Rod seemed keen to bash through as many hits as possible, including Maggie May and Do Ya Think I’m Sexy? It didn’t necessarily feel like one of the most iconic Legend sets, perhaps too much of the audience didn’t connect with his songs, but that didn’t stop it sounding great.
Theatre and circus makes history
Glastonbury’s theatre and circus fields feature hundreds of different types of live performance, including almost roaming street theatre performers, aerialists, more traditional black box theatre and high wire stunts. With cabaret performances going on until the early hours of the morning, the area is a great alternative for nightlife for people who want to avoid the crowds.
Glastonbury 2025 opened with a spectacular theatre and circus show on the Pyramid Stage, the first time in 35 years the festival has programmed a non-music act on its main stage.
Glastonbury’s full title is the Glastonbury Festival of Contemporary Performing Arts, but the event is most famous for its music scheduling. In a change of tradition on Wednesday evening, the Pyramid Stage was overtaken by aerialists, jugglers, acrobats and circus performers, some of which were hoisted above the audience to perform aerial stunts while hanging from cranes. Particularly spectacular were female performers performing precariously from the top of thin polls that swayed back and forth from within the crowd.
The show was called The Dreamweavers Journey and was the preface to the annual opening night fireworks spectacular.
Licensing doesn’t permit Glastonbury to play loud music on the Wednesday night, so the circus acts performed without a musical accompaniment. Live drums and choirs spread throughout the crowds helped make up for the lack of speakers, but mostly the show was a visual spectacular that helped reimagine the type of work that could take place on the festival’s main stage.
The last time Glastonbury opened with a theatre and circus act was 1990.
Michael Eavis celebrates a milestone!
Worthy Farm owner Michael Eavis is celebrating his 90th birthday later this year. There were rumours a birthday party was taking place on site, but short of being invited to that, there were plenty of opportunities to join communal sing-a-longs. Rod Stewart welcomed Eavis on stage for a birthday greeting, and his daughter Emily shared memories about her dad’s 80th party when, a decade ago, he left the doors to the farmhouse open and dozens of people he didn’t know were wandering around the family house. Festival spirit all year round, then…
Kneecap are inevitably controversial
The performance by Irish hip-hop trio Kneecap proved to be every bit as controversial as expected, with a criminal investigation being launched by Avon and Somerset Police over their set on Saturday.
The festival stood firm against pressure to drop Kneecap from the line-up, with Keir Starmer calling their inclusion not “appropriate”. The BBC declined to broadcast the show as part of its coverage.
The PM made his comments after Kneecap member Liam O’Hanna appeared in a London court on a terror charge after being accused of waving a flag in support of terrorist group Hezbollah at a concert in London. He denies the allegations.
Naturally, the PM’s statement only threw petrol on the band’s flames, helping to quadruple the size of the crowd. An hour before the Irish rap act was due to come on, the festival’s app notified punters that the West Holts stage was full and encouraged fans to turn around for their own safety (putting Kneecap on the relatively small stage was one of a handful of programming hiccups of this year’s festival).
Amid a set punctuated by chants of “f*ck Keir Starmer” and plenty of pro-Palestine rhetoric, the band suggested the crowd rioted outside Parliament, before backtracking minutes later. “I have to make a disclaimer,” they said. “I don’t want anyone to start a riot.” Energetic synth-led, dance-inflected tracks included H.O.O.D and Get Your Brits Out. The group rapped in both English and Gaelic during their hour-long set.
The band went mainstream after their semi-autobiographical film, Kneecap, was nominated for six BAFTA awards. Released in 2024, it chronicled the rise of the working class trio from Belfast.
Half made up of genuine fans, half curious middle class tag-alongs who read about the Kneecap controversy and couldn’t resist turning up to the most zeitgeisty set of the weekend, it was the quintessential Glastonbury experience.
Kneecap’s set did not, however, go down as the most controversial of the weekend – that dubious honour went to Bob Vylan, an English punk duo who led the crowd in a chant calling for death to members of the IDF – while being broadcast live on the BBC.
The broadcaster has since admitted it should have cut the stream and reports have circulated that the band have had their US visas revoked and been ditched by their talent agency. Bob Vylan are also being investigated by Avon and Somerset Police over their set.
Glastonbury festival returns in 2027