The 2027 Glastonbury Festival of Contemporary Performing Arts is still a year away – however, the main headliners for the event have already been secured, co-organiser Emily Eavis has confirmed
Rumours have been rife that Madonna will headline the 2027 Glastonbury festival(Image: AFP via Getty Images)
Glastonbury 2027 might still be a year away – but the headline acts have already been secured, organisers have confirmed. The legendary music festival will return for its 40th event next summer.
Fans of the outdoor event – which takes place at Worthy Farm, near Pilton, in Somerset – can brace themselves for “exciting” headliners when the festival returns in 2027. By the time the stages and tents are re-erected, it will have been two years since the likes of Neil Young and Olivia Rodrigo entertained fans in the West Country fields.
There has been no festival in the summer of 2026, as Glastonbury has had a fallow year to allow the grounds to recover after years of dancing, drinking, and more on the green grass. Fans have been wildly speculating who could headline the 2027 festival in recent months.
And now Emily Eavis, the co-organiser of the event, has teased who the headliners may be – or rather has confirmed who they won’t be. After fans expressed hope that American music legend Madonna would lead the performers next summer, the 50-year-old said that the Material Girl won’t be leading the show.
Opening up on BBC Radio 4’s PM programme on Friday, Emily scoffed at the idea of Madge taking to the stage at the 2027 event, which will take place from Wednesday, June 23, until Sunday, June 27. She said: “No, it’s definitely not Madonna, I’ll tell you that.”
However, she confirmed that the headline acts had already been secured a year in advance. She said: “But we have got three headliners and we’re very excited about it – it’s all coming together really well.”
She also rejected the idea that Taylor Swift could be a headline – and then refused to discuss performers any further. She quipped: “Pretty much 95 per cent of the stories [about Glastonbury] you read are not true, and rumours are pretty much always wrong.”
She added. “But the good news is that we’ve got our headliners and we’re cracking on, and we just can’t wait to get back.” The 2027 Glastonbury Festival will be the fortieth event in the history of the festival, even though the first Glasto was way back in 1970. The reason for a discrepancy between the decades of festivals versus the number of shows is that it ran intermittently through the 1970s and early 1980s.
And fallow years have also affected the number of completed festivals – as every few years the event is cancelled in order to give the ground a rest from being trampled by 210,000 people for a long weekend each year.
The Covid-19 pandemic also caused havoc with the festival, forcing it to be abandoned in both 2020 and 2021 as cases of the life-threatening disease surged throughout the UK and the wider world.
The festival is a huge money-maker for not just the Eavis family, who founded and host the semi-annual event. It generates a huge £168 million in economic impact for UK businesses.
Those performing at the festival also tend to see a boost to their own fortunes as their music is played to not just the 210,000 in attendance. Radio and television coverage pulls in tens of millions of additional music fans as the festivities are played out by the BBC, which has exclusive multimedia broadcast rights to the event.
Like this story? For more of the latest showbiz news and gossip, follow Mirror Celebs on TikTok , Snapchat , Instagram , Twitter , Facebook , YouTube and Threads .
