Michael Eavis hosts the first Glastonbury Festival.
The **Glastonbury Festival** is one of the world’s most famous music and performing arts festivals, held at Worthy Farm near Pilton in Somerset, England. Its origins date to **1970**, when dairy farmer Michael Eavis was inspired to organize his own event after attending the Bath Festival of Blues and Progressive Music. The first gathering, called the **Pilton Pop, Blues & Folk Festival**, took place on 19 September 1970 and attracted around 1,500 people. Admission cost just £1 and included free milk from the farm. Performers included Marc Bolan’s T. Rex, and the modest event laid the foundations for what would eventually become a major international festival.
The following year, the event returned as the **Glastonbury Fayre**, organized with the help of Andrew Kerr and Arabella Churchill. The 1971 festival reflected the counterculture of the period, combining music with environmentalism, spirituality, alternative lifestyles and free expression. It was also notable for the construction of the first **Pyramid Stage**, built from scaffolding and metal sheeting. After several years without a festival, Glastonbury returned intermittently during the late 1970s before becoming a more regular event in the 1980s. During this period, Eavis developed partnerships with charitable and political organizations, and the festival increasingly became associated with causes including nuclear disarmament, environmental protection and humanitarian work.
During the **1990s and 2000s**, Glastonbury grew dramatically in both size and international reputation. The festival expanded far beyond its original focus on rock and folk music, incorporating electronic music, hip-hop, dance, theatre, comedy, circus performances, poetry and numerous other forms of entertainment. Some of the biggest names in popular music appeared on its stages, including David Bowie, Radiohead, Oasis, Paul McCartney, Beyoncé and Coldplay. Huge crowds and unauthorized entry became serious problems, particularly during the 1990s, leading organizers to install a large security fence and introduce tighter ticketing controls in the early 2000s. Despite its increasing commercial success, the festival continued to donate substantial amounts of money to organizations such as Oxfam, Greenpeace and WaterAid.
Today, **Glastonbury Festival of Contemporary Performing Arts** has developed into a vast temporary city, attracting more than 200,000 people when performers and staff are included. The festival normally takes place over several days in June, although periodic “fallow years” allow Worthy Farm and the surrounding land time to recover. Glastonbury has also experienced interruptions caused by exceptional circumstances, most notably the cancellation of the 2020 and 2021 festivals during the COVID-19 pandemic. Since returning in 2022, it has continued to combine internationally famous headline acts with thousands of smaller performances across dozens of stages and venues. More than half a century after Michael Eavis staged his first small festival on a Somerset dairy farm, Glastonbury remains an important institution in British popular culture and one of the most influential music festivals in the wo