Pyramid stage
With a genuinely surprise appearance from the Cure’s Robert Smith and a magnificent theatricality to her lovelorn songs, Rodrigo totally steals the entire festival

Olivia Rodrigo’s first Glastonbury appearance in 2022 was the stuff of minor legend. Aged 19, already the author of an 18m selling debut album, but something of an unknown quantity in festival terms, she turned out to be rather more feral and off-message than you might have expected a former Disney Channel star turned teen-popper to be. At one juncture, she named each individual judge responsible for overturning Roe v Wade that weekend, shouting “We hate you! We hate you!” then performing Lily Allen’s Fuck You in duet with its author.

Three years on, with another huge-selling album in the bag, and lifted to the status of headliner, nothing quite so likely to stir up controversy on Fox News happens. But the singer is still capable of springing surprises, when she announces the arrival of a special guest – “perhaps the best songwriter to come out of England … a Glastonbury legend and a personal hero of mine”, you somehow automatically expect Ed Sheeran to appear from the wings, acoustic guitar in hand. But this does Rodrigo something of a disservice. It turns out to be Robert Smith, who duets with her on versions of Friday I’m In Love and Just Like Heaven.

Pyramid stage
While you might quibble that Chic’s set has become more reliable than revolutionary, you can’t argue with the effects of the greatest pop music ever made on the crowd

Sunday at 6pm is a point in the Glastonbury experience what you really need is something dependable. You are sunburnt. The heat is still brutal. You are exhausted. The state of the toilets is unspeakable, and you crave a certain straightforward reliability. And, despite his attempts to reboot the Chic brand with a new album a few years back and a handful of fresh production gigs, Nile Rodgers seems largely content to see out his days in the business of straightforward reliability, simply touring the world playing his old songs. In fairness, if you’d written the catalogue of material he has, you might be inclined to ensure people don’t forget about it.

The initial shock you may have felt at seeing a reconstituted version of the greatest disco band of all playing Glastonbury’s West Holts stage in 2013 has long disappeared – Chic have become a ubiquitous live presence in Britain in the ensuing years – but the meat of their set remains preserved in aspic, more or less the same as it was 12 years ago. That said, anyone who quibbles with the quality of said meat – Everybody Dance, I’m Coming Out, Upside Down, He’s the Greatest Dancer – is the kind of person who shouldn’t be allowed to express any opinions about music whatsoever: this is unequivocally some of the greatest pop ever made.

Pyramid stage
Returning to headline the Pyramid for the first time in 30 years, Jarvis Cocker and co are as dark, grubby and joyous as ever, instantly turning the audience to misty-eyed displays of devotion

“Sorry for people who were expecting Patchwork,” says Jarvis Cocker, in reference to the mysterious name that appeared on the Glastonbury bill in lieu of Pulp’s. “How did you know we were going to play?”

In fairness, Pulp did their best to conceal their appearance at the festival (as Cocker says, it’s 30 years and four days since they were parachuted into the Glastonbury headlining slot, a now-legendary performance that sealed their ascendancy). Keyboard player Candida Doyle even gave an interview to a local Somerset newspaper insisting that while they wanted to play, Glastonbury “weren’t interested”. But clearly no one was convinced – the Pyramid stage is headlining-set heaving.

West Holts stage
From Rod Stewart to Keir Starmer, no one is safe from the Irish group’s ire, as the weekend’s most talked-about set became a mosh-heavy, provocation-filled melee

• Mosh pits and mayhem: Kneecap play Glastonbury – in pictures

It is perhaps worth recalling Kneecap’s appearance at last year’s Glastonbury, a lunchtime set in the Woodsies tent that saw the band widely acclaimed as bringers of boozy, edgy hilarity, complete with songs called Get Your Brits Out and Rhino Ket. Twelve months and some provocative onstage comments about Palestine and Conservative MPs later, they’re both folk devil and cause celebre, whose appearance at the festival is the most hotly debated of 2025 – both the prime minister and the leader of the opposition have had strong opinions about it.

It’s a perfect example of how quickly stories can become overheated in the 21st century: vastly more people now have a opinion about Kneecap than have ever heard their music, which is, traditionally, a tricky and destructive position for a band to find themselves in. Invoking a name one probably shouldn’t invoke under the circumstances, you might want to ask the surviving members of the Sex Pistols how that worked out for them.

Pyramid stage
Perhaps joking, or perhaps not, Matty Healy pronounces himself ‘the greatest songwriter of my generation’ – and that’s only a slightly ridiculous statement

The 1975’s first Glastonbury headlining slot arrives preceded by some intriguing rumours about what’s going to happen. Some fairly eye-popping figures are being bandied about regarding the cost of their set’s staging – which allegedly vastly outweighs the fee the band are being paid – while one dubious online source insists Healy has shaved his head for the occasion. He hasn’t (he appears onstage tonsorially intact), but clearly large sums of money have been spent somewhere along the way.

What ensues isn’t quite as complex as their last tour, which featured lead singer Matty Healy eating raw steak, doing push ups, climbing through a television and Prince Andrew’s face appearing on a bank of television screens accompanied by the strains of Mahler’s 5th Symphony. Nevertheless, there are huge video screens everywhere: not just behind the band, but above them and at either side of the stage, and indeed below the actual video screens that Glastonbury traditionally provides. The treadmill that ran across the front of the stage during their 2018 tour – there for Healy to glide around on, something he does with admirable insouciance – makes a reappearance, while, for reasons that aren’t entirely clear, the rear half of a car makes an appearance stage right at one point. Healy sings from within it.