If you’re planning to be abroad during Glastonbury 2025, you can still tune in to coverage of the legendary music festival via BBC iPlayer. We’ve got step-by-step instructions to use a VPN to connect to BBC iPlayer from anywhere.
Glastonbury festival, held on Worthy Farm in Somerset most summers since 1970, will be attended by roughly 200,000 people. As usual, the BBC has exclusive broadcast rights to air performances across television, radio, and online platforms like BBC iPlayer. This time around, the iconic festival runs June 25–29, 2025.
You’ll need to be covered by a valid TV licence before watching Glastonbury coverage on the BBC.
This covers terrestrial channels available on Freeview, Freesat, Sky, Virgin TV and others, as well as BBC iPlayer on your phone, tablet, and other devices. BBC iPlayer is geo-restricted to the UK, blocking those abroad who don’t pay the annual TV licence from streaming the latest BBC dramas, factual series, comedies, reality shows, and more.
Instead, BBC output appears on channels like BBC America, or streamers like BritBox or Netflix. But while this solution works fine when you’re trying to catch-up on the latest Line of Duty or Doctor Who… it doesn’t work for live coverage of a music festival, like Glastonbury 2025.
That’s where a good VPN comes in.
These popular services encrypt and route all of your online traffic via a VPN servers dotted across the planet. By picking a server location in the UK, you can make it appear to everyone else like you never left home.
Sign-up for 4 months of ExpressVPN for FREE
Sign-up to an annual plan with ExpressVPN and unlock an additional four months of its award-winning service for free. ExpressVPN has apps for Windows, macOS, iOS, Android, Linux, Fire TV, Apple TV, routers, and even gaming consoles like PlayStation and Xbox. It offers 24/7 customer support and a 30-day money-back guarantee, which serves like a free trial when signing-up to a longer contract to unlock the best VPN deal
That means you’ll be able to stream BBC iPlayer as if you were on the sofa at home.
It’s worth noting that BBC iPlayer will continue to make its coverage of Glastonbury 2025 available on-demand after the festival has wrapped-up on June 29, 2025. If you’re on holiday or travelling abroad on business and find yourself suffering with poor hotel Wi-Fi that isn’t up to the task of streaming BBC iPlayer via a VPN, then all is not lost.
With 2026 scheduled to be a “fallow year” to allow the ground to recover and festival organisers a well-deserved break, Glastonbury 2025 is one that you won’t want to miss. Beyond the headline acts, Glastonbury 2025 offers an extraordinary lineup across its stages. Rod Stewart performs in the traditional Sunday Legends slot, whilst Charli XCX headlines The Other Stage on Saturday, with The Prodigy closing Sunday night.
Notable performers include Alanis Morissette, Raye, Scissor Sisters, Blossoms and Alabama 3. The festival features several mystery slots, including Saturday’s ‘Patchwork’ act on the Pyramid Stage from 1-2pm — with speculation linking Haim, Lady Gaga, Pulp, Lewis Capaldi, Robbie Williams, Mumford & Sons, and even Oasis to the slot.
With approximately 200,000 attendees and hundreds of acts performing, the festival promises countless memorable moments beyond the main attractions.
When is Glastonbury 2025?
Glastonbury Festival 2025 will place from Wednesday 25 June to Sunday 29 June.
While there’s no shortage of things for the roughly 200,000 festival-goers who descend on Worthy Farm to do, including culture, stand-up comedy, and arts… the music doesn’t start until 10.30am on June 27.
Who is playing at Glastonbury 2025?
There’s no shortage of star power at the latest festival. Worthy Farm will be headlined by The 1975 bringing their atmospheric synth-pop to the Pyramid Stage, Neil Young & The Chrome Hearts return to the headline spot for the first time since 2009, while Olivia Rodrigo closes-out the festival on Sunday evening with her Gen Z anthems.
The lineup also includes Charli XCX, The Prodigy, Raye, Biffy Clyro, Alanis Morissette, Noah Kahan, Wolf Alice, Deftones, Gary Numan, Franz Ferdinand, Supergrass, Kaiser Chiefs, Japanese Breakfast, Snow Patrol, and many more.
Rod Stewart will reprise the Legends slot on Sunday afternoon.
How to stream Glastonbury in the UK
If you weren’t lucky enough to score a ticket to the sold-out festival, your best chance to catch the performances throughout the five-day festival will be to tune into the BBC.
BBC iPlayer will stream over 90 hours of performances from five main stages — Pyramid, Other, West Holts, Woodsies and The Park. The Pyramid Stage coverage will be broadcast in 4K Ultra HD with British Sign Language available.
Beyond iPlayer, comprehensive festival coverage runs across BBC One, Two, Three, Four, BBC Radio and BBC Sounds.
A dedicated Glastonbury Channel on iPlayer operates from Friday to Sunday, showing key performances, interviews and highlights from past years. The expanded coverage means viewers at home can actually see more performances than festival-goers, who face scheduling clashes and the vast site’s geography.
How to watch Glastonbury coverage outside of the UK
If you’re travelling this weekend, you won’t be able to access the terrestrial channels and livestream above.
Streaming services determine your location using your IP address, a unique identifier assigned by your internet provider whenever you connect online. These addresses are linked to geographic regions, allowing platforms to enforce content restrictions based on licensing agreements.
Your IP address is typically assigned dynamically each time you reconnect, though some providers use static IPs.
VPNs (Virtual Private Networks) let you mask your real location by routing traffic through servers in different countries, tricking services into thinking you’re elsewhere. This enables access to geo-restricted content that’s only available for a specific region.
However, many streaming platforms actively block VPNs to enforce their geo-restrictions and licensing rules.
BBC iPlayer is geo-restricted to the UK, so cannot be accessed from other countries, since it’s only available to those who pay the annual £174.50 TV licence fee that pays for its content.
However, it is possible to access this free stream platform with the right VPN.
ExpressVPN is an award-winning VPN with gongs from the likes of Techradar, CNET, and Tom’s Guide, with praise for its servers dedicated to fast, reliable streaming from anywhere in the world.
Monthly prices start from £4.04 and unlocks ExpressVPN across up to 8 devices.
Once installed, connect to a UK server from ExpressVPN’s network of over 3,000 servers across 105 countries. The service uses proprietary Lightway protocol for enhanced speed and reliability, ensuring smooth streaming of festival performances.
The service works across all your devices – Windows, Mac, Android, iOS, smart TVs and streaming devices like Fire TV Stick. You can even use ExpressVPN’s MediaStreamer feature to watch on devices that don’t normally support VPNs, such as PlayStation or Xbox.
Sign up for a VPN — like ExpressVPNDownload the app to your preferred device (the best VPN deals include unlimited access to apps for Windows, Mac, iOS, Android, Linux, more).Open the app and connect to a VPN server location in UKConnect to BBC iPlayer on the device where you’d like to watchSign-in to BBC iPlayer or create an accountWatch the 2025 Glastonbury Festival coverage from anywhere in the world
Of course, this technique should only be used by licence fee payers who will be outside of the UK while coverage of the festival is broadcast and don’t want to miss out on the shows they’ve paid for with the annual £174.50 fee.
ExpressVPN includes a 30-day money-back guarantee, allowing you to watch the entire festival risk-free and recover your investment if you’re not satisfied with the service.
VPNs are not illegal and are often mandated by companies to improve online security for employees. However, it’s your responsibility to ensure that you’re using these popular apps for legal use. Always check the terms and conditions of the streaming service.
Sign-up for 4 months of ExpressVPN for FREE
Sign-up to an annual plan with ExpressVPN and unlock an additional four months of its award-winning service for free. ExpressVPN has apps for Windows, macOS, iOS, Android, Linux, Fire TV, Apple TV, routers, and even gaming consoles like PlayStation and Xbox. It offers 24/7 customer support and a 30-day money-back guarantee, which serves like a free trial when signing-up to a longer contract to unlock the best VPN deal
Benefits of ExpressVPN
ExpressVPN is particularly well-suited for streaming as it boasts VPN server locations in 105 countries providing access to global coverage. It offers ultra-fast speeds on a 10-Gbps network, essential for high-quality streaming without buffering.
With military-grade encryption, a strict no-logs policy, and features like split tunneling and a kill switch, your online activity stays private.
Unlock 4 months for FREE with latest ExpressVPN deal
Based in the British Virgin Islands — outside Five Eyes jurisdiction — it avoids mandatory data retention laws, which means that even if the company was collecting data (it’s not), law enforcement from the UK and US would be unable to compel ExpressVPN to hand over any information about its subscribers.
ExpressVPN supports a wide range of devices, including smartphones, tablets, laptops, smart TVs, and routers. There’s no limit on the number of ExpressVPN apps that you can download on your devices, and with a single subscription, you can connect to the VPN on eight gadgets at once.
It also has a dedicated team that optimises the service for major streaming platforms. Round-the-clock customer support is available if you encounter any issues during race weekend.
ExpressVPN isn’t the cheapest VPN. However, its 30-day money-back guarantee makes it a risk-free choice for privacy-conscious users and frequent streamers.
It should also give new customers the confidence to subscribe to one of its longer contracts, which unlock the biggest discounts.
What is a VPN?
A Virtual Private Network (VPN) is software that protects and anonymises everything you do online. VPNs can conceal your online activities by routing traffic through an entrypted tunnel that connects to secure servers worldwide.
The most reliable VPNs employ the same encryption standard as governments in the United Kingdom and the United States, ensuring that even your Internet Service Provider (ISP) connected to Wi-Fi cannot record the websites you visit, the duration of your sessions on each site, or your current location. This protection extends to advertisers, trackers, and hackers, preventing them from monitoring your online behaviour.
Furthermore, personal information entered into online forms and sensitive data transmitted to and from your device will be safeguarded from hackers using strong encryption provided by a VPN.
