Reading Festival

Reading Festival has been held on the Richfield Avenue meadows beside the Thames every August bank holiday since 1971 (with an earlier history under different names going back to 1961). It is the world's oldest continuously running rock festival, now paired with Leeds and pulling headliners of the scale of Foo Fighters, Arctic Monkeys, Post Malone, Billie Eilish and Blink-182. Six stages, 105,000 daily attendance, three days of music and five days of camping — for a certain generation of British teenagers this is a rite of passage. The pedigree runs deeper still: the National Jazz and Blues Festival started in Richmond in 1961 and wandered via Windsor and Plumpton before settling here, Reading's council refused a licence in 1984 and 1985 so two years were lost, Nirvana headlined the famous 1992 Sunday, Leeds was added as a twin site in 1999, and 2020 was cancelled outright.

The site occupies a large flat meadow between the Thames and the A329, with the Main Stage East and West at the north end and a fan of dance, alternative and BBC introducing stages spreading south. Camping wraps around the arena in colour-coded zones; a separate 'boutique' Camping Plus area has real beds and hot showers for around £600 extra. Food and bar prices are festival-standard (£12 burger, £7 pint). The site is fully cashless, and mobile coverage regularly buckles on Saturday night. Beyond the two main stages the bill spreads over the Festival Republic Stage plus dance, alternative and comedy tents whose names shift with sponsors every few years, so work from the current year's site map rather than a friend's memory. Free water refill points sit near the arena bars — fill a soft bottle there instead of paying for water all day.

If you're going: weekend tickets around £315, day tickets £115, released the previous autumn and often sold out by Christmas. Hotels within walking distance (Novotel, Malmaison, Ibis, Crowne Plaza) sell out first — book the moment lineup rumours start. If you're not going: the whole town changes for the week, with pop-up bars, extra police presence and near-impossibility of getting a taxi. If you want to visit Reading in a normal state, avoid the late August bank holiday. The site itself is a public meadow the rest of the year, walkable from the Thames Path.

Getting there is genuinely easy, which is half the reason the festival has survived in a town centre. Reading Station takes GWR fast trains from London Paddington in 25-30 minutes, Elizabeth line stoppers in around an hour, South Western Railway from Waterloo in about 70 minutes, and CrossCountry services from Birmingham, Oxford and the south coast. From the station's north side you walk Vastern Road, then Caversham Road, then left into Richfield Avenue past the Rivermead complex — about 20 minutes with a rucksack, longer in the Wednesday crush, and stewarded on a one-way pedestrian route on peak days. Free shuttle buses run from the station forecourt through the weekend; Caversham-bound Reading Buses services up Caversham Road drop you within a few minutes of the gates for a couple of pounds. Skip the taxi rank after 23:00 — walk, or you will stand there for an hour.

Budget honestly, because £315 is the entry price and not the trip price. A weekend ticket with camping lands near £315 plus roughly 10% in booking fees, day tickets are about £115, and Camping Plus adds from around £600 on top of a standard ticket. Payment plans take a deposit of about £50 with instalments through the spring. Car park passes must be pre-booked and add tens of pounds, weekend lockers run about £30, and a phone-charging pack is another £20 or so. Inside, budget £7 a pint, £12 a burger, £10-£12 for a hot noodle or curry box, and £2.50-£3 in fees per cash-machine withdrawal — the site is cashless, so top up the wristband online instead. Realistic all-in for a camping weekend: £450-£550. If you want to spend less, take a day ticket and sleep at home.

Timing shapes the whole experience. Campers arrive from Wednesday afternoon, when the queue on Richfield Avenue can eat two or three hours; Thursday has no arena music, only campsite entertainment, and is the calmest day on site. Friday to Sunday the gates open at 11:00, music runs 12:00-23:00, and headliners take the main stage around 21:15. The quiet window is 12:00-14:00, when you can stand three rows from the barrier for a mid-afternoon band and buy a drink in two minutes; food queues peak 18:00-20:00 and the arena exit jams from 23:00 to about 00:30. Monday morning brings a managed queue at Reading Station between roughly 07:00 and 10:00. For the meadow itself, the pleasant months are May to July — it is a wet floodplain in winter and worth nobody's walk in January.

It suits 16 to 25-year-olds better than anyone else, and that is not a criticism — it is the design. Under-16s need an accompanying adult ticket-holder, and nobody should bring a small child to a campsite that is awake until 03:00. Wheelchair users are properly catered for, with viewing platforms at both main stages, an accessible campsite and a free personal assistant ticket, but applications to the accessibility team close weeks in advance, so file yours the same week you buy. On a wet afternoon there is almost no shelter beyond the packed dance tent and your own tent, so pack a coat rather than an umbrella. With a one-hour gap before a train, skip it entirely: walk the Thames Path to Caversham Bridge instead and listen to the bass roll across the water for nothing.

The good news for non-ticket-holders is that the festival sits inside a genuinely walkable stretch of Reading. Caversham Bridge is five minutes from the site entrance, with Christchurch Meadows and the wooded loop of View Island 10-15 minutes further on and Caversham Court Gardens free to wander just beyond. Thames Lido, the restored Edwardian pool on King's Meadow with heated open-air water and a good restaurant, is about 15 minutes from the station and needs booking days ahead in August. Reading Museum in the Town Hall is free and holds the full-length Victorian replica of the Bayeux Tapestry, 10 minutes from the platforms; the Abbey Ruins and Forbury Gardens are five minutes past that. For supplies, the Tesco Extra on Napier Road is the standard festival stop, roughly 10 minutes from the station.

The honest caveats: you will not see the lineup you planned. Clashes across six stages, 20-minute walks between them and bar queues mean most people catch perhaps six or seven full sets a day, so choose three non-negotiables and treat the rest as luck. The meadow is either dust or mud with almost nothing in between, and the 23:00 arena curfew means the late hours happen in the campsites, where Sunday night is loud, messy and heavily policed — tent theft is real, so take valuables in with you. Do not believe the myth that abandoned tents are donated; take yours home. Day tickets are generally single-entry, so a pub stop mid-afternoon can end your day. And buy only through the official Festival Republic channels or Ticketmaster's face-value resale; the third-party resale sites charge double for tickets that may not scan.

Hours & entry

Not free

Fri-Sun late Aug, gates 11:00 · Music 12:00-23:00 daily · Camping from Wed afternoon

What to see

{'what': 'Main Stage East headliners', 'where': 'North end of the site, north of the arena bridge'}

{'what': 'BBC Radio 1 Dance Stage tent', 'where': 'West side, mid-site'}

{'what': 'The Thames-side view over the arena', 'where': 'West perimeter fence walk during sunset'}

Tips from the ground

Book a Reading Town Centre hotel the moment lineup rumours drop — Novotel and Malmaison sell out within days.

Weekend tickets go on sale October-November; join the pre-sale mailing list for early access.

Sunday day-tickets are usually cheapest and often have the best headliner.