Glastonbury announce opening ceremonies and “stunning Theatre & Circus show” to kick off 2025 festival

Glastonbury have announced their opening ceremonies and a “stunning Theatre & Circus show” to kick off the 2025 festival.
The festival will return to Worthy Farm in Somerset this year from June 25 to June 29 before taking a fallow year in 2026.
The full lineup was recently revealed, with a number of secret sets and a mysterious band called “Patchwork” being teased alongside already confirmed headliners Rod Stewart, Neil Young, The 1975 and Olivia Rodrigo.
Now, Glastonbury have also unveiled two opening ceremonies on its opening Wednesday night. The festival will feature a Theatre & Circus show for the first time since 1990, where ‘Look To The Skies’ will bring highwire walkers, acrobats and incredible circus performances to the festival.
The traditional opening ceremony in the Green Fields’ Sacred Space in the King’s Meadow will also see the return of the ‘The Flame Of Hope’. This flame unites 15 sacred flames from around the world, and will honour “a thousand voices who will unite in a powerful mantra for Peace to create a collective sense of unity, love, and purpose,” ending with a fireworks display at 10.45pm.
Finally, the Sacred Space will host the Biggest Mantra for Peace ever seen at Glastonbury Festival on Thursday at 12:30pm, to “demonstrate compassion and solidarity with those living in conflict and create a moment of reflection and celebration of peace, hope and unity”.
We’ve just unveiled the full Glastonbury 2025 line-up featuring over 3,000 performances across dozens of stages at this year’s Festival. Head to https://t.co/NKlDpvAwoc.
Our official Glastonbury 2025 app, powered by Vodafone will go live on Thursday, allowing you to plan your… pic.twitter.com/9eSHUm1oQR— Glastonbury Festival (@glastonbury) June 3, 2025
Last year, the festival opened with its first-ever drone show. The show took place ahead of its regular fireworks show, and the festival enlisted 576 drones – per the BBC – for a stunning display above the festival grounds.
The drones first took on the shape of the festival’s old logo, which sees three people with their arms interlinked. It then transformed into a phoenix, before turning into a depiction of the iconic Pyramid Stage, the Glastonbury name and a peace sign among others.
Watch footage of the spectacular moment down below:
Meanwhile, the full lineup for Glastonbury has just dropped today (June 3), with a whopping 56 TBAs spotted on the poster.
Most notably, there’s a glaring ‘TBA’ at the Pyramid stage on Friday before Alanis Morrissette‘s set, along with a mystery show at the Woodsies early on Friday at 11.30am. The Park Stage also has a gap on Saturday in between Gary Numan and Beth Gibbons.
Sam Fender, Robbie Williams, Lorde and more have all been speculated to fill those slots.
A mysterious band called “Patchwork” will also play the Pyramid stage. This is rumoured to be Haim – and they are playing an isolated one-off date in Margate on June 27 ahead of their ‘I Quit’ tour starting in September.
Tickets initially sold out last November, with the official resales then taking place in April. Glasto first-timers include Alanis Morissette, Noah Kahan, Lola Young, Myles Smith (winner of this year’s BRITs Rising Star award), Busta Rhymes, Brandi Carlile and Gary Numan.
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