Yes, Glastonbury is widely considered the premier music festival in Europe – but it’s also among the most expensive and hardest to get tickets for. If you missed the window or your bank balance just couldn’t handle it this year, don’t panic. Check out these five awesome Glastonbury alternatives that give you the perfect excuse for a holiday, and cost less than the £565 your average Glastonburovian has to fork out for the experience. Just don’t hang around – tickets are still available at the moment, but they’re going fast.
Sziget
This is one of the big ones, combining music and multicultural celebration in an island recreation centre and attracting nearly half a million festival goers each year. Besides multiple music stages, it includes theatre and dance, an art area, acrobatics shows and a chess tent. Headline acts for this year’s 7-day festival include Rihanna, Manu Chao and Noel Gallagher, with almost every imaginable genre represented on one stage or another by the end of the week.
Where: Budapest, Hungary
When: August 10-17
Cost of tickets: £198 for the full seven days
Flights from London to Budapest start from £123
iStock.com/Luca Cepparo
Best Kept Secret
Not the place to find the mod music of the day, Best Kept Secret draws long-loved acts like Back, Air Asgeir and Dinosaur Junior who play on the shore of Beekse Bergen. The main stage plays on the sand of the beach. It won’t necessarily be fun in the sun – festivalgoers have reported damp and chill despite the early summer date – but it’s a great time by all accounts.
Where: Hilvarenbeek, Netherlands
When: June 17-19
Cost of tickets: 1-day tickets start from €69
Flights from London Stanstead to Eindhoven start from £40
Exit
What’s better than three days of music in Eastern Europe, surrounded by people not just a part of fandom but part of a movement for social justice and progress in the Balkans? Attending that festival in a medieval fortress. It’s another multi-genre event, with styles ranging from world music, to electronica, to heavy metal. Acts in the 2016 lineup include Bastille, The Prodigy and Dave Clark.
Where: Novi Sad, Serbia
When: July 7-10
Cost of tickets: £107
Flights from Heathrow to Belgrade start from £185
Aleksandar Cocek, EXIT 08 via Flickr CC BY 2.0
Colours of Ostrava
Even if you’re not a fan of those 80s-era alternative and punk videos shot at industrial locations, you’ll get a kick out of this festival hosted in the middle of a massive decommissioned ironworks. Lightshows and art installations complete the artsy atmosphere, linking over 16 open-air and covered stages including (this year) Tame Impala, Of Monsters and Men and 2Cellos.
Where: Ostrava, Czech Republic
When: July 14-17
Cost of tickets: £60-75
Flights from London Gatwick to Ostrava Mosnov start from £176
Roskilde
This festival turns its location into a miniature city for eight days, so well-accommodated is has full laundry facilities and mobile recharge stations. It even has a podcast for people too excited to wait until the actual week of the festival to get in the event’s headspace. With its size and star draw, it’s definitely the most equivalent replacement for Glastonbury. This year’s lineup includes Macklemore, Tenacious D, Niel Young, and LCD Soundsystem.
Where: Roskilde, Denmark
When: June 25 – July 2
Cost of tickets: Flights from £213, with more premium options than any wallet can reasonably handle
Flights from London to Copenhagen cost as little as £25
Whichever festival you pick (or if you pick one of the dozens of other music happenings across Europe this summer), your planning starts with booking your flight. The prices we listed are good as of April – to get the latest prices, launch a flight search now.
