Glastonbury 2025, by the numbers, from the cows to toilets to pints to, yes, the music

LONDON (AP) — This week, thousands of music lovers from across the U.K. and beyond will flock to a farm in the southwest of England for the legendary Glastonbury Festival of Contemporary Performing Arts. But just how many?

Find out in this guide to Glastonbury — and all of its quirks — by the numbers.

The festival’s current license allows up to 210,000 people on-site, including fans, staff and performers — but, this year, a few thousand fewer tickets have been sold, to avoid overcrowding.

The closest village of Pilton has a population of around 1,000 people. During the festival, though, the area becomes the seventh-largest largest city in the U.K. (more than double that of nearby Bath, which has a population of around 94,000).

Brooklyn Brewery's pilsner has been the official beer of Glastonbury since 2023, keeping festivalgoers well lubricated. This year, they are preparing more than 1.2 million pints of lager for a hot and thirsty crowd. That's equivalent to two standard-size swimming pools.

And that’s despite Glastonbury’s B.Y.O. standing, unique at British music festivals where bringing alcohol in from the outside is usually prohibited. At Glastonbury, if you can carry it, you can drink it, and it’s not uncommon to see wheelbarrows and small trailers being pulled into campsites with a weekend’s worth of supplies of food and drink.

The headliners on the iconic Pyramid Stage traditionally attract the biggest crowds, and Elton John’s 2023 farewell gig attracted more than 120,000 fans as he closed the festival. Paul McCartney pulled in more than 100,000 festivalgoers for his headlining Saturday night set in 2022.

As well as standard portable toilets, the more than 4,000 toilets include the infamous “long drops” — lockable, open-air toilets set up on high with a huge concrete gutter around 10 feet (3 meters) below (looking down not recommended) and “compost loos,” with a bin of sawdust located outside to scoop and scatter over your business. There are also both men's and women’s urinals for a speedy pee!

By contrast, there are scarce few public showers. Organizers instead recommend a “good ol’ fashioned stripwash and making do.”

This year’s headliners are English indie rockers The 1975 on Friday, Canadian-American singer-songwriter Neil Young on Saturday and American pop star Olivia Rodrigo closing on Sunday. But if that’s not your thing, there are 3,969 other acts to choose from.

Tickets for this year went on sale in November 2024, more than 6 months before a single performer was announced, yet the general admission tickets sold out in 35 minutes. The resale round in April saw remaining tickets sell out in just 20 minutes.

This does not mean this week is the 55th edition though, as traditionally the festival takes a fallow year roughly every five years to allow the farmland to recover. The last official fallow year was 2018, but the festival's 50th anniversary in 2020 and the following year's edition were canceled because of the coronavirus pandemic.

If you're considering making Glasto plans for next year, don't bother: 2026 is a fallow year.

This is equivalent to 500 soccer pitches or approximately 733 standard American football fields. That makes it the world's largest greenfield music and arts event.

The rest of the year, that is — the humans and the cows don't cohabitate during the festival. Worthy Farm, where the festival is held, is a working farm with 500 milking cows and 500 young stock. During the festival, organizer Michael Eavis sends the dairy cows for a short stay at the Glastonbury “Moo-tel,” a large shed based away from the action, while the rest go off to graze further afield.

The more than 400 stalls go well beyond the traditional festival burger, offering just about every type of global cuisine you can imagine. Plus the Brits love a “meal deal” (a combo of a main meal and a drink or side dish) and Glastonbury is no exception with 6-pound (roughly $8) meal deals offered across the site to keep things affordable.

Twenty-one of these were for drug-related offenses, but the festival retains a low crime rate overall.

A “Super Fortress Fence” was installed in 2002. Before this, there were tens of thousands of gate-crashers every year. Some jumped the fence, while others tunneled under, “Great Escape” style. Eavis installed the impenetrable fence after he was fined in 2000 for breaching licensing conditions.

Ticket holders can get access starting 8 a.m. Wednesday to pitch their tents and bag the best spots. While there is entertainment and music over the first few days, the main stages start up on Friday morning and run through Sunday night. All festivalgoers must leave by 5 p.m. Monday, when the site officially closes.

Coldplay has headlined the Pyramid Stage a record five times. They first topped the bill in 2002, followed by 2005, 2011, 2016 and, most recently, 2024. Arctic Monkeys, Muse and Radiohead are among an elite group of artists who have headlined three times.

Among the list of banned items you might expect, including narcotics, weapons and fireworks, are the less assuming Chinese lanterns, body glitter and gazebos. The first two are verboten because of environmental concerns — a couple cows have died from ingesting the remnants of a Chinese lantern! — while a sudden rash of gazebos would take up too much space in the busy campsites.

Glastonbury banned single-use plastic in 2019, installing more drinking water fountains around the site and encouraging festivalgoers to bring reusable bottles — for water or some other liquid of choice, of course.

Festivalgoers sit outside a bar during the Glastonbury Festival in Worthy Farm, Somerset, England, Wednesday, June 25, 2025. (Scott A Garfitt/Invision/AP)

Emily Eavis, center right, and Michael Eavis, center, react with others as the gates open, on the first day of the Glastonbury Festival at Worthy Farm, in Somerset. England, Wednesday June 25, 2025. (Yui Mok/PA via AP)

Revellers queue for entry, on the first day of the Glastonbury Festival at Worthy Farm, in Somerset. England, Wednesday June 25, 2025. (Yui Mok/PA via AP)

Festival goers are sprayed with water to cool down in the heat during the Glastonbury Festival in Worthy Farm, Somerset, England, Wednesday, June 25, 2025. (Scott A Garfitt/Invision/AP)

Festival goers arrive at the Glastonbury Festival in Worthy Farm, Somerset, England, Wednesday, June 25, 2025. (Scott A Garfitt/Invision/AP)

Festival goers arrive at the Glastonbury Festival in Worthy Farm, Somerset, England, Wednesday, June 25, 2025. (Scott A Garfitt/Invision/AP)

MADRID (AP) — With most European leaders talking tougher about immigration amid a rise in far-right populism and Trump administration warnings that they could face “civilizational erasure” unless they tighten their borders, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez stands apart.

The Iberian nation has taken in millions of people from Latin America and Africa in recent years, and the leftist Sánchez regularly extols the financial and social benefits that immigrants who legally come to Spain bring to the eurozone’s fourth-largest economy.

Spain’s choice, Sánchez often says, is between “being an open and prosperous country or a closed and poor one.”

His words stand in stark contrast to other Western leaders, and so far, his bet seems to be paying off. Spain’s economy has grown faster than any other EU nation for a second year in a row, due in part to newcomers boosting its aging workforce.

“Today, Spain’s progress and strong economic situation owe much to the contribution of the migrants who have come to Spain to develop their life projects,” Sánchez said in July after anti-migrant clashes rocked a small southern Spanish town.

Sánchez's immigration approach, including his remarks about immigrants' contributions to Spanish society, is consistent with those of the country's past progressive governments, said Anna Terrón Cusi, a senior fellow at the Migration Policy Institute think tank who previously worked on immigration policy for multiple Spanish governments, including Sánchez's.

“What has changed a lot internally is that there is now very anti-immigration rhetoric from Vox, especially against Muslim immigrants,” she said, referring to the far-right Spanish party that has been polling third, behind the ruling Socialists and center-right People's Party. “But Sánchez, unlike other European leaders, responds by directly and strongly confronting this narrative.”

Centrist leaders across Europe are facing rising pressure from anti-immigrant far-right parties, despite a significant decrease in illegal border crossings into the EU over the past two years.

In France, where the once-ostracized National Rally far-right party has built support, centrist President Emmanuel Macron now speaks about what he refers to as “the migration problem."

“If we don’t want the National Rally to come to power, we must address the problem that feeds it,” Macron said last year after France passed new restrictions that he described as “a shield” needed to “fight illegal immigration” while helping to “better integrate” migrant workers.

While running to be German chancellor this year, Friedrich Merz vowed to toughen the country’s migration policy. Days after he was elected, Germany boosted its border security efforts. And in recent weeks, it has presented new figures suggesting a rise in deportations of rejected asylum-seekers and a drop in the number of new asylum-seekers.

Sánchez’s progressive government, too, has seen pro-immigration proposals stall.

Last year, it amended Spain’s immigration law to facilitate residency and work permits to hundreds of thousands of immigrants living in the country illegally. At the time, Migration Minister Elma Saiz said Spain needed to add as many as 300,000 taxpaying foreign workers per year to sustain its state benefits, including for pensions, health care and unemployment. Critics, though, said the changes to the law had many shortcomings and even hurt some migrants instead.

A more ambitious amnesty proposal later also endorsed by Sánchez’ progressive government stalled in Parliament due to its thorny politics.

“There were some voices that pointed out that (the amnesty) could have a very big social impact,” said Cecilia Estrada Villaseñor, an immigration researcher at the Pontifical Comillas University in Madrid. She added, “there is a European context that comes into play. We belong to the European Union, and right now the balance lies in a different place.”

Sánchez’s government, in conjunction with the EU, has also paid African governments to help stop migrants, from reaching Spanish shores, including many would-be asylum-seekers.

Most immigrants in Spain enter the country legally by plane. But the relatively few who arrive on Spanish shores in smugglers' boats dominate headlines and are routinely held up by far-right politicians and media as a sign of what's wrong with the government's stance.

Last year, amid steep rises in the number of people making the dangerous sea crossing from Africa's west coast to the Canary Islands, Sánchez traveled to Mauritania with EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, who pledged 210 million euros (around $247 million) of EU money to help the northwestern African country curb migration.

The efforts seem to be working. Migrant arrivals to the Canary Islands this year are down 60%, which even the government's critics say is because of governments in Africa stepping up border controls.

But rights advocates blame Sánchez's policies for the violent deaths of migrants in Spain and abroad, such as the 2022 flashpoint in the Spanish enclave of Melilla, in North Africa. In that instance, sub-Saharan migrants and asylum-seekers scaled a border fence, which sparked clashes with authorities in which 23 migrants died.

In an interview with The Associated Press a week later, Sánchez defended how Moroccan and Spanish police responded, calling the attempt “an attack on Spain’s borders.”

In response to questions from the AP, a spokesperson from the prime minister's office said, “our migration policy is effective and responsible.”

Spain is home to millions of migrants from Latin America, who are fast-tracked for Spanish citizenship and generally integrate easily because of the shared language.

More than 4 million people from Latin America were living in Spain legally in 2024, according to government figures. The current leading countries of origin for Spain’s immigrants are Morocco, Colombia and Venezuela.

Spain's central bank estimates the country will need around 24 million working-age immigrants over the next 30 years to sustain the balance between workers and retirees-plus-children.

But economists say Spain's millions of immigrants have added fuel to another political fire — the country's increasingly unaffordable housing market. José Boscá, an economist at the University of Valencia, said alongside pressures from overtourism and short-term rentals in cities, Spain hasn't built enough housing to accommodate its new residents.

“If you integrate so many people, but you don’t build more housing, there could be problems,” Boscá said.

In response, Sánchez's government has pledged to fund more construction — especially of public housing — and also floated measures to crack down on wealthy foreigners buying second homes in the country.

Associated Press reporters Kirsten Grieshaber in Berlin, Sylvie Corbet in Paris and Renata Brito in Barcelona, Spain, contributed to this story.

FILE - Spain's Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez arrives for an EU summit at the European Council building in Brussels, Thursday, June 29, 2023. (AP Photo/Virginia Mayo, File)

FILE - Riot police officers cordon off the area after migrants arrive on Spanish soil and crossing the fences separating the Spanish enclave of Melilla from Morocco in Melilla, Spain, on June 24, 2022. (AP Photo/Javier Bernardo, File)

FILE - Migrants disembark at the port of "La Estaca" in Valverde at the Canary island of El Hierro, Spain, Monday, Aug. 26, 2024. (AP Photo/Maria Ximena, File)

FILE - Spain's Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez speaks with the media as he arrives for an EU summit at the European Council building in Brussels, Thursday, March 23, 2023. (AP Photo/Geert Vanden Wijngaert, File)