UK festival ticket prices have risen by as much as 233% since 2016
Mark Tovey is a finance journalist with bylines in The Guardian, The Motley Fool, and more. He digs into data and FOI-based investigations, and makes finance easier to understand.
Last updated 15th July 2026
6 min read
There was a time when going to a festival mainly required a tent, a tolerance for warm lager and the confidence to believe a packet of baby wipes counted as personal hygiene.
Today, enjoying a weekend of live music could easily set you back as much as a weekend city break in Europe – and that's before you've bought a single overpriced pint.
We analysed how much festival ticket prices have really changed in the past decade – not just in cash terms, but how far they've risen beyond inflation, and what they now cost in hours of work at the average UK wage.
Financial Interest provides guidance, not advice. If you’re unsure about anything, speak with a qualified adviser. When investing, your capital is always at risk. Past performance does not guarantee future results.
Which UK festivals have increased ticket prices the most?
All 18 of the festivals we looked at have seen some price rises, which is to be expected over the course of a decade. Inflation – the increase in the cost of everyday goods and services – has risen a cumulative 41% or so since 2016.
But many have raised prices by far more than inflation alone would explain, while others have actually become cheaper in real terms than they were a decade ago.
A three-day ticket including camping for ArcTanGent, a three-day festival near Bristol, cost £75 back in 2016. That’s around £106 in today’s money. But the same event today will set you back £250 – £144 over and above inflation.
Boomtown, an immersive festival built around themed city districts, clocked up the second largest real-terms rise in our study. A tier 1 ticket cost £135 in 2016, but the equivalent phase 1 ticket costs £315 in 2026 – an inflation-busting surge of over £124.
Meanwhile, Creamfields, one of the UK’s biggest electronic dance music festivals, recorded the smallest rise. A ticket cost £220 in 2016, which would be around £310 if the cost of entry had kept pace with rising prices. But ravers can bag a ticket for £290 this summer, making the festival around £20 cheaper in real terms than it was a decade ago.
How much longer you'll have to work to afford a ticket
We also looked at what those price rises actually cost you in something arguably more meaningful than money: time.
Using median full-time hourly wages, we calculated how many hours of work a festival ticket would have cost you in 2016, and how many it costs you now.
In 2016, an ArcTanGent ticket cost the equivalent of around 5.5 hours of work, while the current ticket requires around 12.7 hours, an increase of 130% in working time.
A 2000trees ticket rose from around seven hours of median-paid work to 12.7 hours, and Bearded Theory increased from 7.1 hours to 13 hours.
Truck Festival rose from 6.4 hours to 10.7 hours, while Boomtown increased from 9.9 hours to 16 hours.
Most festivals became less affordable relative to median wages, but yet again, there were exceptions.
Creamfields fell from around 16.2 hours of work in 2016 to 14.7 hours now, while the Isle of Wight Festival fell from 14.9 hours to 13.7 hours.
Bloodstock, Reading and Leeds saw relatively small increases in working time, despite their higher cash prices.
Promo code worth up to £100 with Trading 212
Get free fractional shares worth up to £100 when you join Trading 212 and deposit at least £1 via our link, or use promo code FIN within your account. Terms apply. Affiliate link.
Free share worth £10-£100 with Freetrade
Claim a free share worth between £10-£100 when joining Freetrade. Minimum deposit £50. Terms apply. Affiliate link.
Free fractional shares worth up to £100 with Lightyear
Get up to £100 in free fractional shares when joining Lightyear via our link, or using promo code ‘FIN’. Minimum deposit £100. T&Cs apply. Affiliate link.
Why have prices risen so much?
Believe it or not, Glastonbury (or Worthy Farm Pop Festival, as it used to be known) had an entry price of just £1 back in 1970, or about £14 today. For that, you could see Marc Bolan headlining, and enjoy free milk from the farm.
But since then, the humble weekend in a field has become a multi-million pound operation – bigger stages, bigger artists, bigger production, and an audience that expects running water and a decent phone signal.
Festivals today not only typically operate on tight profit margins, but are facing heavier pricing pressures than ever, balancing ticket prices with ever-soaring costs.
Many are still recovering from the financial impact of Covid, when two consecutive summers of cancelled events left festivals carrying significant debt and wiped-out reserves. Brexit has added to the pressure too, bringing new red tape, cutting off a vital source of funding, and making it harder to hire skilled crew from Europe.
And Independent festivals – like ArcTanGent, 2000trees and Bearded Theory – have been hit particularly hard. According to The Association of Independent Festivals, more than 100 events disappeared during the pandemic, equating to around one in six.
The organisation’s CEO, John Rostron, told us just how dramatically things have shifted: “It feels like an entirely different industry now, with almost all of the costs required to put on an event soaring. The most staggering of these are topline artist fees, with artists charging festivals 70% more than they were back in 2019.”
Despite these pressures, though, Rostron said there are reasons for optimism, with strong demand from festivalgoers helping some events manage rising costs.
“Recent years of great summers and fantastic events, coupled with the huge uptake in payment plans where audiences can spread the cost of buying their ticket over a whole year, has led to a surge in interest for independent festivals, with many selling more at early bird than ever before.”
Ultimately, while the days of a cheap weekend in a field may be behind us, the enduring popularity of festivals shows that fans are still willing to make room for them in their budgets – and their lives. The challenge for the industry now is ensuring that rising costs do not push that experience out of reach for the people who make it possible.
Methodology
We compared the price of an adult weekend festival ticket including standard camping with the closest equivalent ticket offered in 2016.
Prices include compulsory per-ticket booking fees where the amount could be verified. Refundable deposits, postage, parking, premium camping, campervan passes and optional early-entry upgrades were excluded.
For most festivals, the latest available price was for 2026. Glastonbury and the Isle of Wight Festival used 2025 prices because no directly comparable 2026 ticket was available.
Affordability was calculated using median hourly earnings excluding overtime for full-time employees.
The 2016 median hourly wage was £13.59 (excluding overtime). As the equivalent 2026 earnings figure has not yet been published, the latest available 2025 figure of £19.67 was used.
Some festivals use tiered pricing, meaning customers who bought earlier may have paid less than the listed price used in this comparison. Festival duration, facilities and ticket structures may also have changed over the period.
To calculate above-inflation price rises, we uprated each festival's 2016 ticket price by the cumulative CPI inflation rate of 41.2% between 2016 and 2026, to arrive at an inflation-adjusted equivalent in today's money. The above-inflation rise is the difference between this adjusted figure and the current ticket price.
Financial Interest provides guidance, not advice. If you’re unsure about anything, speak with a qualified adviser. When investing, your capital is always at risk. Past performance does not guarantee future results.
