How much do Glastonbury Festival 2024 headliners and acts get paid?

Festivalgoers heading to Glastonbury 2024 will see Dua Lipa, SZA and Coldplay headlining the famous Pyramid Stage. And while it costs a pretty penny for those attending - £355 for a ticket, to be precise - how much can the acts they're there to see expect to rake in from it?

It's not quite as much as you'd think. Despite Glastonbury being one of the most famous music festivals in the world, it's more about the love of Worthy Farm than the chance to earn a small fortune.

Glastonbury organisers Michael and Emily Eavis previously revealed their act pay structure, with Michael saying: "I paid £200,000 for Paul McCartney and for Coldplay, and although it sounds a lot, they could have charged me far more."

READ MORE: Glastonbury 2024 full line up, stage times and schedule for Pyramid Stage, Other, Woodsies and more

Emily has also spoken about how the festival's performers are typically paid a fraction of what they’d usually expect from a major music festival. Talking to BBC Radio 6, she explained: "We're not in the same bracket as everyone else when it comes to paying artists massive fees. We're really grateful for the bands that we get because they're basically doing it for the love of it.

"It's probably less than 10 per cent of what they'd get from playing any of the other major British festivals, [so] Glastonbury relies completely on goodwill."

While the offer of "exposure" doesn't pay the bills for us mere mortals, when it's one of the world's biggest stages things are a little different. On George Ezra's podcast, Emily previously explained: "Because of the TV and because of the exposure that they (acts) get, they do go on to do really well afterwards, so they'll sell records afterwards.

"So we're saying 'look, come and do this but even though there's a small fee, we can almost guarantee afterwards you'll make up for it'."

Bestival organiser Rob Da Bank, previously told SomersetLive that Glastonbury has a cap on its budget - so for many, playing there is more about the experience and kudos that comes with it.

He explained: "They cap their budget and even the headliners don't get paid more than £500,000 I think, which is cheap for some of the headliners and they've had a lot of them. So, that's proof of it's huge, huge influence."

And while the exact fee for each headliner is never revealed publicly, Lyle Bignon - a music consultant specialising in live music venues and festivals told Metro: "The likes of Elton John and Guns N' Roses, who have decades of global fame behind them, can likely command higher prices running into the £250,000+ range."

In contrast, headliners at other UK festivals can earn upwards of £1million for their performances, according to reports. In the USA, Billboard said Beyoncé was paid £3.2million for her Coachella performance in 2018.

Relying more on goodwill means Glastonbury is able to make big donations to a range of charitable causes. In December 2023 it said it had made payments of over £3.7m to charities.