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.

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The parliament in Ghana has approved a new bill criminalising homosexuality and the promotion of LGBTQ+ activities.

Identifying as lesbian, gay, bisexual transgender or queer can be punished by up to three years' imprisonment. The bill also introduces a "duty to report" prohibited acts to police.

Religious leaders have pressured President John Dramani Mahama, who still needs to ratify the legislation, to strengthen anti-gay laws since he came to power last year.

The ban has been sharply criticised by international organisations, including Human Rights Watch, which said it placed LGBTQ+ peoples' lives at risk while also "encouraging citizens to surveil and denounce one another".

Same-sex relationships have been banned in Ghana under laws dating from the British colonial era.

In an address to Parliament, the bill's sponsor Reverend John Ntim Fordjour said the bill protected Ghanaian family and cultural values.

He said the new bans would make existing laws "more robust, more encompassing, and more stringent in dealing with the practices of LGBTQI".

Anyone who identifies as an "ally", a general term for a supporter of LGBTQ+ people, could also face a prison sentence.

Exemptions were included for legal, media and healthcare professionals who report on LGBTQ+ issues or provide medical treatment or other services for gay people.

Human Rights Watch recommended the bill be abandoned, in a formal submission to the constitutional and legal affairs committee scrutinising the legislation in the capital Accra.

Ghana passed a similar bill in 2024 but it did not become law after former president Akufo-Addo failed to sign it amid legal challenges.

President Mahama has indicated he would support the bill's passage, saying shortly after he took office that "I believe in the principles and values that only two genders exist – man and woman. And that marriage is between a man and a woman."

Several African countries have cracked down on LGBTQ+ rights in recent years.

Senegal's parliament approved similar legislation in March which prescribes a maximum prison term of 10 years for sexual acts by same-sex couples and criminalising the ''promotion'' of homosexuality.

Uganda introduced a death penalty for certain same-sex acts in 2023.

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The Ukrainian military is stepping up its campaign to destroy vehicles supplying Russian forces along crucial roads in occupied Ukraine using new AI drone technology, experts say.

BBC Verify has confirmed footage of at least 14 incidents published in the past week of vehicles carrying food, fuel and ammunition being targeted along critical routes connecting Russia to Crimea and other occupied territories in southern Ukraine.

Ukraine is starting to regain more ground than it is losing for the first time since 2023, analysis from the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) indicates. After more than four years of war and increased Russian occupation of eastern and southern Ukraine, neither side has gained any significant ground in recent months.

Experts say recent drone technology advancements, including the AI-enabled Hornet system, have allowed Ukraine to attack Russian targets travelling to the front lines at greater distances and with increased accuracy.

Ukraine's defence minister, Mykhailo Fedorov, said on Wednesday its "logistics lockdown" strategy aims to "increase pressure on the Russian military in the rear and deny the enemy the ability to conduct sustained offensive operations".

Footage analysed by BBC Verify and online by GeoConfirmed open source analysts shows burned-out shells of container lorries and other military vehicles at multiple locations along a key route through southern Ukraine.

At least 10 incidents were recorded between Russia's border and the occupied city of Mariupol, with one strike recorded south-west of the city of Melitopol. The critical route is used by the Russian military to supply their forces on the front line and in Crimea.

Clément Molin, an analyst at think tank Atum Mundi, told BBC Verify he had confirmed the destruction of 150 vehicles more than 20km (12 miles) from the front line, although he said this likely accounted for about half of all incidents.

The strikes mean Russia has been forced to shorten convoys on supply routes as a "quick coping mechanism to reduce potential damage", Cristian Vlas at conflict monitoring group Acled told BBC Verify.

He suggested Ukraine's main objective was not only to strike the assets "important to Russia's image of grand power", but to disrupt key logistical convoys, command posts, and communication towers. These "feed, fuel, and inform Russian units at the front line and form the basis for capacity to fight in the battlefield and launch long-range drone and missile strikes from occupied territories".

Robert Tollast, land warfare expert at the Royal United Service Institute, told BBC Verify that some brigades were estimated to need up to 1,000 tonnes of fuel, food, ammunition and other key supplies every day. He said Ukraine had previously used a long-range strike campaign against Russian air defence units, but the new drone strike ranges "are something else".

"If you are cutting resupply, for example ammunition trucks 100km or more from the front using small drones, and then longer-range drones are going after larger logistical sites, this is a very serious problem for the Russians," he said.

Ukraine's Hornet drones are equipped with an AI-targeting system which has been trained on thousands of hours of videos of Russian military targets gathered over the last four years, Nick Brown, a weapons expert from defence intelligence company Janes, told BBC Verify. They can also access the Starlink satellite network to connect to operators over longer distances, a system that is also more resistant to jamming by Russian forces.

"Ukraine can launch hundreds of these loitering munitions towards a rough target area over 100 miles away and then use AI to detail them on to Russian military targets as they find them," he said.

Ukraine's innovative use of technology means the war is not a stalemate, according to George Barros from the Institute for the Study of War (ISW), and Kyiv is using mechanised equipment in tactical manoeuvres that were impossible 12 months ago.

"Russia's ability to conduct infiltration missions will likely continue to degrade as Ukraine's intermediate-range strike campaign pushes Russia's logistics and forward operating bases further away from the front lines, reducing resourcing to sustain infantry tasked with infiltration missions," he said.

One of Ukraine's specialist drone units, the 412th Nemesis Brigade, said this week that Russian commanders had limited the movement of heavy equipment in southern Ukraine and were attempting to evade drones by using fields and dirt roads.

The Russian-appointed leader of the occupied areas in Ukraine's Kherson region, Vladimir Saldo, has also ordered restrictions on civilian traffic along the route.

Barros said Ukraine's "drone superiority" had even neutralised Russia's attempts to gain an advantage by moving "overwhelming numbers" of troops to the front line, but added that the advantage may be shortlived.

"Russia will very likely eventually develop countermeasures so Ukraine's international partners have a rare and temporary opportunity to exploit favourable battlefield dynamics while Ukraine has the upper hand."

Additional reporting by Kayleen Devlin, Joshua Cheetham and Sherie Ryder, graphics by Tom Shiel.

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