I almost got crushed to death at Glastonbury last year ...Middle East

There is a moment in the crush of thousands of people at a festival where everything is almost calm. Tilting my head up to the sky, I disassociate as I try my best to box breathe in the cattle of sweaty bodies slithering around each other in gridlock. I’m in a human chain with my friends and my grip is claw-like, yet we’re dwindling in numbers by the second. I have a feeling that something bad is about to happen.

Welcome to the apocalypse that was coming out of Erik Prydz at Arcadia, 3am, at Glastonbury last year. My third time at the festival, this was the worst crowd crush I’ve ever experienced. Sure, Glastonbury festival is known for its huge crowds, but this was different. And it wasn’t a one-time fluke.

Fifteen minutes after making it through this panic-attack-waiting-to-happen, I ended up in another gridlock near The Park’s Stoneridge Bar. This time, it was a total standstill – part queue for a DJ set, part people trying to flee but trapped. At times, my feet were literally off the floor, but all there was to do was wait until the tent’s one-in-one-out system un-wedged a few more people from the blockade. The night never recovered.

There was an overcrowding issue at play at Glastonbury festival in 2024, it’s clear – programming, too, as people flocked to the same artists. Practically everyone I know who went was caught in something scary. Callum Davison, 26, from Manchester, actually left before his favourite DJ – and Thursday headliner – came on at the San Remo stage, despite having waited there practically all day. “The shoving and elbowing got unbearable. People were having panic attacks – it was mad,” he says. “We did the same slot in 2023 and it was popping. The crowd was full but everyone had enough space. This time, the crowd were so aggy with each other too, which is really unlike Glasto.”

The most infamous crush last year, though, was at Bicep on Friday night (technically Saturday 1am) at IICON stage, in the late-night rave hub South East Corner.

“It was the most stressful crowd experience I’ve ever had there,” says Julia*, 44, from London, who’s been going to the festival for years. “It went from the standard jostling to suddenly having to almost swim through a human sea of bodies. I was elbowing people in the face, literally climbing over people, and crawling through people’s legs.” After 28 minutes, the performers actually stopped the set for 10 minutes, coordinating the crowd to take steps back in unison – and refusing to restart until they did.

“I’ve never known a stage to get turned off, and I’ve definitely never seen IICON like this. You felt like you couldn’t breathe, like you were suffocating,” she says. “Me and my friends are the sort of people that don’t normally give up in these situations, but one of them said, ‘No, I’m not doing it. This is not safe. I’ve got a really bad feeling. I’m getting out of here.’ She was pale and shaken, and actually went straight back to the tent to sleep off the stress. For context, she’s been doing Glastonbury for well over a decade.

“They’re really lucky that no one got hurt,” continues Julia, who has known IICON to be full and busy, but never rammed in a way that felt dangerous. “Organisers tried their best, though. If they hadn’t shut down the stage, I do think something really, really bad could have happened.”

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For this year’s event, which takes place later this month, the festival has sold “a few thousand less tickets” in an attempt to avoid a repeat of last year’s safety concerns, according to organiser Emily Eavis on Nick Grimshaw’s Sidetracked podcast, this week. They have also taken precautions like expanding the South East corner and reducing Oxylers campsite to increase space at the Other Stage area.

But with a capacity of 210,000, a few thousand tickets is nothing. Glastonbury has dramatically expanded in recent years, so this new figure will still be more than 2019 numbers (203,000), and far from the 170,000 capacity of 2014. And while the site has got bigger in that time, it has not expanded commensurately with the number of tickets sold.

I’m sceptical these layout tweaks are enough – there needs to be a complete overhaul in the site configuration. Let’s hope this makes a difference, though, because I don’t have it in me to go through that again.*Name has been changed

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