Emily Eavis sits down with BBC Sounds’ Sidetracked with Annie and Nick to discuss Glastonbury 2025. She refuses to be drawn on speculation as to who ‘Patchwork’ are, amongst much excitement and rumour, but she does reveal she has been “working on Patchwork for a long time” and the reasons are mainly “logistical”.
She discusses changes to the festival this year including plans to sell fewer tickets, redesigning popular spaces, and some green ambitions: “Shangri-La have got a new creative this year which is exciting…They’re going full trees and green space!”. And she speaks about plans to celebrate a big birthday with Michael Eavis, “he turns 90 in October so we’re planning a party for him, and I was thinking we want to make this festival like a big birthday moment as well for him because 90 is amazing”.
On crowd management, and selling fewer tickets
Emily: The other thing is that we’ve sold a few thousand less tickets. So it'll be interesting just to see how that affects the dynamics on site. So apart from what I was saying about telling people to use different routes and to use the whole site, but also just to see if there's a few thousand less can make an impact on some of the busier times.
Nick: Because it must be hard for you to guess or predict when someone is gonna have a huge cultural moment like Charli [Charli XCX] you know, or Doechii, like the way she's blown up since this time last year. It's hard to predict that. So once you've booked them, that's where they're at.
Annie: You have to commit to the original place.
Emily: Totally. And interestingly, the app was really accurate last year. So we were getting a lot of feedback from, so people plan what they're gonna see. We can see what they're gonna see, which is really useful for us from a crowd perspective. So we can say, red, orange, green. And we are like, okay, this is looking like it's gonna be a red, so the chances are, if it's gonna be busy, the field might have to be closed, right?
Emily comments on the mysterious alias of “Patchwork”…
Annie: Emily, there are 56 TBA’s on the line-up this year and it’s sent the rumour mills into a frenzy, particularly a mysterious band listed as “Patchwork” playing the Pyramid on Saturday night so they must be big – we know you probably can’t make any comment but I’m just going to run through these and you can blink-
Emily: I’ve been working on “Patchwork” for a long time, I tell you what, pretty much since I saw you this time last year I’ve been working on Patchwork.
Annie: So they took a lot of persuading? That’s a good clue, Grim!
Emily: Well, it’s more logistical.
Annie: Some are saying that “Patchwork” could be HAIM because an author called Sylvia Haim has written a book called Patchwork. I love the depth, the detail in the guessing! Other names are Sam Fender, Robbie Williams, Lorde.
Emily: Oh gosh so many good names.
On celebrating Michael Eavis’ 90th birthday
Emily: In terms of surprises I think we're benefiting from the fact we're having a fallow year because you know also it's my dad's 90th which is brilliant. So he turns 90 in October so we're planning like a party for him and I was thinking I've got to you know we want to make this festival like a big birthday moment as well for him, because 90 is amazing and he's just mentally completely following everything.
Annie: So you'll have some sort of birthday shindig for him at the festival?
Emily: I think we've got to! So we'll do that and then we'll probably have a party for him in October. But last time he had a party in his house for his eightieth and he just opened it up and anyone! But I was like, there's just people everywhere. I went up to his bedroom and there was like people in his bathroom, you know, like, and I was just like, only my dad would not mind! And he was just like downstairs, “I've got no idea who they are, no idea!”
[Laughs]
Nick: That's what it's supposed to be, it's good, because that stems from him, doesn't it, that energy of like, “let 'em in, yeah!”
Emily: Yeah, let 'em in, no, I don't mind, darling, it's all right, they're all upstairs. They're just having a look around.
Nick: I love that, well, we'll see you at the 90th. We’ll all come!
Emily talks about the importance of economic survival and still being able to give back, despite suffering a £10 million loss in profit post Covid
Annie: It’s been fascinating, in the last two months, to witness the veil being lifted on UK festival culture and the fact that private equity now funds the majority of UK festivals, it’s been mad… what does that mean for people.. how do you have integrity in that world? How do you stay independent?
Emily: That’s a good question. It is quite a challenge. The finances and the business of it is something we work on every day. Not just for now, it needs to work for the future. We kind of mentioned earlier about us buying land is securing the future of the festival so we can keep on running it because we are working with a lot of people who want to buy that land!
…
Emily: We are still recovering from Covid. We lost £10 million in Covid, which was all of our savings, so we are still recovering, which is why we’ve had to make a profit in the last couple of years because actively, we’ve tried not to make a profit before because we give away as much money as we can.
Annie: Just to say – to charity – it’s important people know that.
Emily: To charity – last year we gave £5.9 million away, the largest sum we’ve managed to do. It’s probably my most enjoyable part of the job, because I get to go through a list of organisations and it’s just the best feeling being able to do that. As much as there is talk about our profit, we try to give as much away as we can.
Emily reflects on changes to Shangri-La this year
Nick: When you say you’re asking people for feedback – who do you ask?
Emily: We ask all the crew and then we like to hear from the public… the public are pretty vocal, which is good. I like hearing about what worked.
Nick: What were the takeaways?
Emily: There are a few little changes. Shangri-La have got a new creative this year which is exciting. They are going completely the opposite of everything they’ve done in the past. They’re going full trees and green space… So Shangri -La what we've done is we've added a field next to it which was crew camping and kindly the crew where I kind of suggested that they make some space for the public there because I think it's really important to try and make space particularly in the southeast corner because it gets really busy at night and I think if you want to go down and you don't want to necessarily go into the like, you know, the busy bits, you can go to Dragon's Tail and you can literally sit on a hill and see it all.
Emily discusses green ambitions and plans for the fallow year in 2026
Nick: You will get to Monday of Glastonbury 2025 and what happens then? How do you approach a fallow year?
Emily: We’ll be planting our trees and working on a community project… a fallow year reminds everyone it’s a farm and a family! There will be work but I am looking forward to going to a sports day, for example, without being really stressed! I can go on holiday!
…
We’re actually planting 30,000 trees on the fallow year next year, I’m really excited about it. We bought some land on the outside of the site and we’re just going to do a big planting project. Just plant trees, plant hedges, restore the wild side of the farm and surrounding land.
Sidetracked by Glastonbury
3 very special bonus episodes of Sidetracked with the people that will define this year’s festival. Hear it on BBC Sounds first and watch on iPlayer.
Sidetracked is a BBC Audio production for BBC Sounds.
