Glastonbury cancelled for 2026: Why is the famous British music festival taking a year off?

Coldplay entertaining the crowd at this year's Glastonbury Festival. The event will not go ahead next year, during its traditional “fallow” year to allow the land to recover. Photo / Getty Images

As this year’s event wraps up, the famous British festival has announced a hiatus.

Glastonbury Festival has been cancelled for 2026.

Bosses of the event at Worthy Farm, Somerset, confirmed on Sunday it will not go ahead next summer because it will be one of its traditional “fallow” years to allow the land to recover from the thousands of fans who descend on it for the music extravaganza.

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Organiser Emily Eavis, 44, whose farmer father Michael, 88, started the festival in 1970, told the Sun: “[It will] give the land a rest. The festival before a fallow year is always a fun one to plan, because you almost have to fit two years into one.

“We’re already in talks with some acts for it. It’s exciting.”

Glastonbury’s fallow years are usually every fifth summer, with its last one in 2018, before it returned the following year.

Sunday was the final day of this year’s event — with Shania Twain, 58, performing in its coveted Legends Slot before a closing headline act by 34-year-old SZA — born Solana Imani Rowe — on the Pyramid Stage.

Eavis said of this year’s event: “I really would like to say thank you to everyone who’s made this year so special.

“It’s got to be the best one yet. Every single one of our vast, incredible crew is crucial to making this event work.

“And, of course, it simply wouldn’t exist without the participation of the kind, brilliant, respectful festivalgoers.

“I think people here show a better way to live, and that they do take a little bit of that back to the outside world with them.

“It honestly restores your faith in humanity.”

Michael J. Fox on stage with Coldplay singer Chris Martin at Glastonbury 2024. Photo / via BBC

Coldplay’s Saturday night set had them bring on Parkinson’s-battling Michael J. Fox, 63, in a wheelchair to tell him as he held a guitar that he was the reason they became a band — in an apparent reference to his guitar playing in Back to the Future.

Dua Lipa played the Pyramid Stage the previous night and revealed to a 100,000-strong crowd: “I’ve written this moment down and wished for it and dreamt of it and worked so hard.”