As the Glastonbury Festival approaches, ticket holders—especially first-timers—are beginning to consider what essentials to pack for this iconic five-day music celebration. One vital item to prioritize is sturdy, comfortable footwear, given the expansive scale of the festival grounds.
Understanding just how vast Glastonbury is can be surprising. The festival covers an impressive 1,500 acres, encompassing Worthy Farm and surrounding fields designated for the event. At its widest, the site stretches over 1.5 miles and is enclosed by a boundary known as the “superfence,” which spans eight kilometres.
To help fans better visualize the size of the event, organisers have created the Glastonbury Map Overlay. This interactive tool allows users to compare the festival’s grounds with locations worldwide by simply entering a place name into the search bar, immediately revealing how the festival’s expanse measures up.
READ MORE: Somerset Couple Celebrates Joyful Arrival of Their IVF ‘Modern Miracle’ Baby
READ MORE: Somerset Pub of the Year: Help Us Find the County’s Best
However, these comparisons only include the main event site, not accounting for additional areas such as car parks, pre-booked camping zones, and campervan spaces. Including these, the overall footprint of the festival is even more impressive.
Off-site camping surrounds the main venue, complemented by 61 colour-coded parking zones for vehicles. Within the festival grounds themselves lie over 100 stages and tents, along with extensive sanitation facilities – more than 2,000 long-drop toilets, upwards of 1,300 compost toilets, and over 700 metres of urinals. Emily Eavis, co-organiser and daughter of festival founder Sir Michael Eavis, has highlighted the bespoke sewage system that supports this massive infrastructure in a BBC special episode.
Beyond the sanitation, Glastonbury offers an astounding selection of amenities, including over 100 bars and more than 500 food stalls. When mapped out, the size of the festival rivals that of the nearby town of Shepton Mallet, which had a population of approximately 10,800 in 2019.
Drawing crowds of around 200,000 people, the festival employs thousands to build and manage the site. With an official capacity of 210,000 attendees, Glastonbury transforms rural farmland into a vibrant, temporary city.
The area occupied by the festival is also similar in size to Glastonbury town itself, which covers about 3.34 km² but has a population of only 8,297 as of 2021. The festival’s scale and population far exceed its namesake town, underscoring the colossal nature of this unique event.