Glastonbury 2024: The best tips to buy tickets

16 November 2023, 16:21

The last time Glastonbury was held was in June 2019
Glastonbury will return for another year in 2024. Picture: WENN Rights Ltd / Alamy Stock Photo

As tickets for Glastonbury 2024 go on sale this month, let Radio X's top tips help you nab those elusive spaces.

By Jenny Mensah

Every year, thousands of music-lovers whip themselves into a frenzy in an attempt to purchase tickets to the greatest music event in the world: Glastonbury Festival.

After being held for the first time in two years in 2022 and returning in 2023, the Somerset festival will be back between 26th and 30th June 2024.

The first chance to buy tickets for the festival will be Thursday 16th November 2023 at 6pm (for coach packages) and Sunday 19th November at 9am for general admission.

Buying tickets is an undertaking which fills even the most seasoned veterans of the Somerset festival with dread- especially because they always seem to be gone in a matter of minutes!

However, it doesn't need to be a totally lost cause...

Because we feel everyone should get the chance to sample the mud and the madness at Worthy Farm, we’ve put together a list of tips to help you nab yourself some tickets to the biggest party on earth!

How hard is it to get Glastonbury tickets?

Getting a Glasto ticket is reasonably difficult, with an estimated 2.5 million people trying for just over 200,000 tickets each year. However, we've got some tips to make sure that you put your best foot forward and give yourself the best possible chance of claiming a spot at the world-famous festival.

Get our top tips and tricks for getting a Glastonbury 2024 ticket here:

Glastonbury's nightlife is legendary
Glastonbury's nightlife is legendary. Picture: Charlie Raven / Alamy Stock Photo
  1. Make sure you're registered

    Nobody can buy a ticket without having a unique registration number which comes with your photo ID, so if you haven't registered already, we're afraid you've already fallen at the first hurdle.

    Because the ticket sale for 2024's festival has been pushed back two weeks, organisers have said registration will open again at 12 noon on Monday, 6th November and will remain open until 5pm on Monday, 13th November.

  2. Know your dates

    Fans have the chance to buy tickets to Glastonbury four times a year.
    First - there's a coach and general ticket sale in Autumn the year before the festival and then you can try your luck in the Spring resales.

    These are the dates and times you NEED to know:

    • TICKETS PLUS COACH TRAVEL ON SALE AT 6PM GMT, THURSDAY, 16TH NOVEMBER
    • GENERAL ADMISSION TICKETS ON SALE AT 9AM GMT, SUNDAY, 19TH NOVEMBER
  3. Take it very seriously

    Sure, there are more important things in the world. But in those 30 to 45 minutes before the words “Tickets Unavailable” start appearing, you should act as if it’s the last hour before your dissertation is due or as if you're a few minutes away from walking into the interview for your dream job.

    Talk to your friends, make a strategic plan, and most importantly…

  4. Don't be hungover!

    As with most years, general admission tickets go on sale on a Sunday morning. That means there’s a good chance you were toasting the weekend the night before.

    Get to bed early, then get up early – fresh as a daisy. Just think about all the time you’ll have at Glasto to be hungover... IF you get tickets.

    And if you go for coach tickets, don't go for a swift half in the pub first. You need 100% focus and attention.

    Will you be basking in the Glastonbury sunshine this year?
    Will you be basking in the Glastonbury sunshine this year? Picture: Jamaway / Stockimo / Alamy Stock Photo
  5. Form a syndicate

    You should be able to enter six registration details in total when you try for tickets. This goes down to four in the resale for general tickets and two for the coach tickets.

    That means you can have a solid force of 5, 3 or 4 other units other than yourself constantly eyeing up that browser. They don’t even need to be people you plan on camping with. Everyone on earth has a colleague who’s said “Ha, yeah man I’m totally going to try and get Glasto tickets this year! I hear Taylor Swift's going to headline!”

    Now... you may not particularly want to hang out with this person, but you can use them to your advantage.

    Or better still - you can always enlist very good friends who have already got tickets to help! All they need are your registration number and postcode.

    Create a google doc, have all your names, postcodes and registration numbers in a spreadsheet and get VERY familiar with it.

  6. Copy and paste in details DO NOT type them

    Once you’ve got your elite crew of razor sharp buddies together, make sure you prepare yourselves. And this means no typos so: EXCHANGE DETAILS PROPERLY!

    To buy tickets, all you need is everyone's full name, Glastonbury registration number and postcode.

    Make sure you copy and paste them in. DO NOT rely on handwritten notes or typed text messages.

    Set up a Facebook group or Whatsapp thread to communicate during the sale so no two people are trying with the same details at the same time and DEAR LORD double check for typos.

    The last thing you want is to get through and fill in your details only to see: "Sorry, that reference number is not registered."

  7. Triple check your card details

    If you're lucky enough to make it through, you automatically become the lead booker and therefore you'll need to have your card details at hand.

    If you are buying tickets in the Autumn sale, you will now need £75 for each successful ticket you book.

    Make sure you enter these details EXACTLY as you see them because if you don't you could fall foul of being frozen out of the system.

    In past years, a wrong letter or number could mean everyone's registration details are frozen for UP TO 10 MINUTES.

  8. Check Your Email

    Once you've made the booking, be sure to check your email in the hours after you have made the purchase. And be sure to check your junk folders.

    If you haven't received an email within three hours, ticket holders are urged to contact the team at See Tickets via their Customer Service Portal.

  9. Use a work computer (if it's out of hours)

    No matter how great you think your home fibre optic connection is, it’s probably not as good as your Internet at work. Plus, just think, Sunday morning? Who’s going to be around? (Unless you work in hospitality or at a church).

    All that delicious, powerful internet will be solely yours.

    Disclaimer: Radio X takes no responsibility for you getting fired for misusing work property.

  10. Attack from all angles

    Often your tablet has a slicker internet connection because it isn't crammed with as much rubbish as the laptop you bought back 2006.

    So there's no harm in trying that.

    DISCLAIMER:

    Glastonbury explicitly asks people not to use multiple devices, saying: "running multiple devices simultaneously to attempt to access the website is a waste of valuable resources, and doesn’t reflect the ethos of the Festival."

    It might not reflect the ethos of Glastonbury, Festival but they've not said it doesn't work, so make of it what you will.

  11. REFRESH! REFRESH! But not too much...

    If you get through to the ticket page stage where the message appears “you’re currently in a queue, this page will keep refreshing automatically” then you’re halfway there.

    BUT before that, just keep banging it.

    TIP: double check which keystroke does a "hard refresh" on your browser in advance. Each browser is different. A hard refresh clears cookies, meaning you're seeing a brand new version of the page, rather than one that's held in your browser locally.

    Glastonbury returns to Worthy Farm between 22nd and 26th June 2022
    Glastonbury returns to Worthy Farm between 22nd and 26th June 2022. Picture: Alamy Stock Photo
  12. Have a BACK SPACE in your back pocket

    Up until this point you've been in refresh mode, but once you get onto the booking page you have to be VERY careful what you do next.

    Sometimes the booking page freezes or "hangs" and in this instance Glastonbury has advised to "try pressing back once and then continue your booking from that point."

  13. Know when to close your browser and start again

    Now, we wouldn't recommend you EVER just close your browser when you're in the process of getting onto the Glastonbury booking page, but according to organisers on their info page from 2020:

    "Please don’t continue to refresh the page more than 10 minutes after entering your details as your access to the page will have expired. You will need to close the browser and start again to gain fresh access to the booking page."

    That means... don't just stand there looking at your booking screen after 10 minutes. Every second counts, so as painful as it feels to do it... cut your losses and start again.

  14. Set See Tickets As Your Homepage

    Every year, Glastonbury partners up with seetickets.com to sell the tickets.

    Instead of mucking about trying to just get onto the site at 6pm or 9am, set https://glastonbury.seetickets.com as your home page.

    So when you open a webpage, BOOM Glastonbury is there. But do bear in mind…

  15. Have multiple browsers if you must NOT multiple tabs

    Now, your brain will be saying “JUST OPEN MORE TABS!” when panic sets in. Resist.

    Unless you’re trying to purchase tickets on a NASA supercomputer, then chances are your laptop can only process so much information at once. Plus, if you have 30 tabs open you can't keep track of them anyway.

    If you want more than one view of the page, use multiple browsers NOT tabs, as tabs tend to share the same information and could lead to booking clashes.

    The Glastonbury website advises in its basic ticket information: "Attempting to book tickets online using multiple browser tabs can confuse the ticket sales process and cause your transaction to fail.

    "We strongly advise that you use just one browser tab when trying to book tickets, in order to avoid possible problems with your transaction."

  16. Have enough money in your account… Obviously

    Don’t worry, we’re not criticising your intelligence or capabilities with managing your finances. But in this age where we all have eight different accounts and credit cards, sometimes it’s easy to lose track. Be prepared to have whatever funds you need ready for all the people you're buying for.

    Glastonbury 2024 tickets will cost £355 + £5 booking fee, of which a £75 deposit (plus coach fare if booking a ticket + coach travel option) is payable when booking in November, with the full balance payable in the first week of April 2024

  17. Don't Give Up

    Look, Glastonbury does sell out quickly. It’s true.

    But have faith - keep going until the page tells you to stop. In fact... There have been some cases where would-be festival punters have had the sold out message on their browser, only to backspace and find they were allowed into the system again. We're not saying this will definitely happen, but it's always worth still going until Glastonbury officially announce that tickets have sold out from their official X (formerly Twitter) account

    So remain focused. Keep calm and carry on and DO NOT STOP until you see that final message from the festival themselves.

    GOOD LUCK EVERYONE!

Read the Glastonbury ticket sale FAQs here.