You may have noticed ticket prices for your favourite festivals becoming more expensive each year.
Analysis by BBC News has found the cost of entry to the UK's major festivals has surged over the past decade - rising above the rate of inflation.
And fans are being hit in the pocket even more when you factor in the rising cost of food, drink, merchandise and travel.
But the hikes have been uneven, and a variety of factors are at play, our research shows.
Back in 2007, a ticket for Reading and Leeds cost £145. After taking inflation into account, this would be about £245 in today's money.
Entry to the same event in 2025 was £325 - this is £80 more than the adjusted 2007 amount, also known as the "real terms" price.
These real terms price rises differ sharply across the festivals, we have found.
Neither Glastonbury nor Wireless are holding an event this year so we have looked at the change between 2013 and 2025.
Parklife tickets increased by around £69 (71%) in real terms since 2013 - while Reading and Leeds had a much smaller increase, rising by about £40 (14%) over the same period.
Download sits between these groups, with prices rising more gradually through the 2010s and increasing more sharply after the pandemic - rising 26% over the 12 years.
Glastonbury saw the largest pounds and pence increase, with tickets costing around £85 more today - a 30% price hike.
Wireless follows a very different pattern, with a 10% decrease in ticket prices seen over the same period. From 2012 onwards, its day‑ticket prices fell sharply, dropping from £214 to £98 by 2024, reflecting changes in pricing strategy and format. That trend reversed abruptly in 2025, with a sharp price rise to £157.
The comparison suggests that while inflation explains a substantial share of rising ticket prices, it does not tell the whole story.
Different festivals appear to have adopted markedly different pricing strategies - such as moving to day events or offering less camping - leading to diverging real costs for music lovers across the UK festival circuit.
For fans, the price hikes can mean sacrificing other things.
Katie Scarlett, a 23-year-old festival content creator, attended her first festival in 2019 - and says she is prioritising festivals "instead of going on holiday".
"You're prepared that it's going to be a bit of an investment, but I look at things like train prices and compare it to what I'd be spending on flights," she tells the BBC.
"Some of the money I've put towards festivals this year would be equivalent to a few days in Spain, but festivals are a lot more accessible and a more attractive option when you have so much uncertainty around the cost of flights."
Primary school teacher Russell Akbar agrees. Having attended festivals since the age of 16, the 30-year-old has noticed the price of refreshments at festivals has gone up too - so he's diversifying.
"I've started bringing a lot more of my own food and drink in the last few years," he says.
Akbar says he has been going to smaller events since Covid "as ticket prices are cheaper", and until this year he "hadn't been on a proper holiday abroad for five or six years" as he had prioritised going to festivals.
He says he has been using a payment plan method which allows him to split the cost of a ticket over several months to help him afford to go.
Both Scarlett and Akbar feel festival organisers have been trying more to "pull it out of the bag" with stellar line-ups and huge headliners in recent years to entice fans to fork out for more expensive tickets.
If we zoom in a little closer on each festival, we can see further differences.
For Reading and Leeds, the biggest increases in ticket prices came after the pandemic, rising from £288 in 2021 to £325 in 2025.
For the Somerset extravaganza of Glastonbury, which is in a fallow year this year, ticket prices have risen from £286 in in 2010 to £374 in 2025, following a long period of relatively steady prices through much of the 2010s.
Most of the price rise has come since the pandemic, with tickets climbing from £318 in 2019 to a peak of £374 in 2025.
And for Parklife, ticket prices peaked after the pandemic in 2021 at £192, but have since reduced to about £167 in 2025.
There have been "two big changes" that have affected festival prices in recent years, according to John Rostron, CEO of the Association of Independent Festivals.
"The pandemic and Brexit," he tells the BBC. "During the pandemic, festivals were not open but they had ongoing costs with staff and rescheduling artists - they lost loads of money so had to recoup in different ways.
"And with Brexit it's not necessarily about cheap labour, it's skilled labour - we lost really great backstage crew and technical crews that went back to Europe and haven't come back. So [festival owners] have had to invest in skilling up and training people," he adds.
Despite the price hikes, Rostron says payment plans for ticket purchases have been "the big shift in ticketing" since he came into his role in 2022.
"Now, everybody does it and it's revolutionised things," he adds.
Festival Republic, which runs Reading and Leeds, Wireless and Download, stressed that the tickets "represent significant value for money... particularly compared to other major live events".
The company told us about its upfront costs, which include artist fees, staging, power, fencing, security, medical provision, licensing, welfare, sanitation, transport, insurance, production, staffing and local suppliers.
"Those costs, which are usually fixed or committed well in advance, have risen sharply in the past few years, from labour, fuel, power and transport through to security, production, infrastructure and materials," the firm says.
The BBC reached out to the organisers of Parklife, who declined to comment.
Glastonbury's organisers said they were on a fallow year this year and they maintain that the festival offers "great value for money" with more than 100 stages.
Additional reporting by Pilar Tomas
