Glastonbury Festival 2024: our top tips for getting tickets, with the coach sale opening in two weeks

Your spreadsheets are readied, your phone is charged, everything is organised, and now it’s time to breathe. Buckle up, aspiring festival-goers: the first round of Glastonbury tickets go on sale in just two weeks, but you’ve got this.

But what if you’re feeling wildly unprepared, or you just want to put the final touches on your plan? That’s ok too, you’re in the right place. Here are our top tips to help you secure the goods, plus some extra details about the festival.

The first batch of Glastonbury tickets land imminently: coach tickets including National Express travel to Worthy Farm are going on sale on November 16 at 6pm GMT.

A general sale will then take place on Sunday November 19, at 9am GMT.

You need to have already registered ahead of time, so if you haven’t already then you can do that here, between November 6 at 12pm, and November 13 at 5pm.

At 6pm on November 16, coach tickets are going to go on sale via SeeTickets, here. Click through on this link, and you’ll come through to a screen which says something like ‘you’re in the holding queue’ and that screen automatically refreshes every 15 seconds. There’s a chance that you’ll also arrive to a broken page due to the sheer volume of people attempting to get tickets; don’t panic, and calmly keep refreshing until you progress.

You can just wait and let the screen refresh for you automatically, but most people hit refresh at shorter intervals, just so they feel like they are doing something. Don’t do this more than every ten seconds or so, because the site may think that you’re a bot. Eventually, if you’re lucky, you will be progress through to the checkout pages.

Here, you’ll be asked to pick coach times, dates, and departure locations, and will need to put in your name, postcode and registration number in order to pay for them. Buying for anybody else? You’ll need to enter in their information too, so make sure you have it all organised and ready. And that’s literally it.

Yes it’s a bit of a mad race against thousands of other music fans who have also logged in, but there’s a good chance you’ll be able to grab some tickets. Particularly if you follow our tips below.

There’s nothing worse than being halfway through cooking dinner and realising you’ve missed it. We suggest getting online about ten to minutes before the ticket sale begins, just so you don’t feel freaked out, but nothing is going to actually happen until 6pm.

That means: card details, registration numbers, and the postcode that you registered with (which is probably your home address, but you can double check that here). 

Also make sure you have enough money in your bank account to pay the £75 deposit for each ticket, plus coach fare - any last minute bank transfers will slow you down.

Some people swear by using their phone, hooked up to mobile data, to buy tickets, others prefer to use their computer on wifi. Either way, you’ll be calmer if everything is charged.

That means going somewhere where there’s reliable wifi, if that’s your approach. We’ve all heard stories of people staying at work to use their company’s super super fibre optic broadband. This isn’t possible for everyone, but just moving to the corner of your house where the signal is the strongest is a good second best.

Another top tip is making sure you turn off your other electronic devices, particularly ones that use the internet. Apparently it helps.

London’s internet is pretty good when compared with some other parts of the country, but according to analysis from National Broadband, Bromley, Waltham Forest, Richmond, Enfield, Kingston Upon Thames are the best places internet-wise to try and buy Glastonbury tickets.

Meanwhile, Lambeth, Hackney and Tower Hamlets are reportedly the worst places to grab tickets, so it might help to stay and work, or head to a friend's house, for the sale.

It makes sense that the more devices you use to try and buy tickets the higher chance you have at actually bagging one. However, although it’s tempting, opening loads of tabs actually slows down the all important refresh. 

With two weeks to go there is still time to get into a group. These groups are essentially teams of super organised friends who are going to work together to buy tickets. The idea is that six people are stronger than one: six people (the maximum number of tickets one person can buy) all try to buy six tickets, with one person likely to get through.

Sometimes groups join other groups to create “trees”: the idea is once your team succeeds in purchasing tickets, you then go and help other groups. You need to be incredibly organised for this: there needs to be a spreadsheet with everyone’s names, postcodes, registration number correctly listed so they can be quickly copied over. There needs to be a dedicated payer, and there needs to be enough money in that person’s bank account. If you’re not already in formation, get on it, now.

Cool-headed customers always fare best: be prepared, don’t hysterically refresh, team up with friends if you can, and have your information ready. You’ll be fine, and if not, there’s always the general sale.

The second round of Glastonbury tickets will go on sale on November 19 at 9am, and you also need to have registered.

If you aren’t successful in buying tickets initially, it’s not completely game over: there’s another chance to buy them in the resale which is expected to take place towards the end of April 2024.

The date of next year’s Glastonbury Festival is June 26-30, 2024.

Ticket prices for Glastonbury 2024 will cost £355 + £5 booking fee.

You can pay a £75 deposit for your ticket and then pay it off in instalments up to the first week of April 2024, when the balance must be paid in full. Tickets will only be sold via See Tickets here.

There’s also the option to buy a coach ticket with your ticket during the coach sale, which typically costs between £40 and £150 depending on your departure point.

Approximately 210,000 fans attended the event this year, breaking the official attendance record of 2002, when 153,000 tickets were sold.

The largest number of visitors is thought to have been in 1994, when around 300,000 people turned up, many of whom were gatecrashers.

Glastonbury Festival is held on Worthy Farm, on a 900-acre site in the Vale of Avalon. That is the equivalent of more than 500 full-size football pitches.

Somerset Live reported that the festival site is more than 1.5 miles in length at its widest point and is surrounded by the “superfence” — an eight-kilometre-long perimeter fence. The fence, standing at more than four metres high, has unique features including an attached external roadway to prevent tunnelling, 45-degree overhangs to prevent climbing, and zero nuts and bolts to stop the fence from being tampered with.

Glastonbury Festival, June 26-30, 2024; glastonburyfestivals.co.uk