Palestine solidarity was not confined to a couple of moments, but was a pervasive normality at the festival, in stark contrast to our media, reports Katherine Hajiyianni

In the sun and sequin-soaked fields of Glastonbury Festival’s ‘most political year yet’, one message dominated every corner of Worthy Farm: ‘Free Palestine’.

Back in the real world, the mainstream media tells a jarringly different story; the narrative being that unapologetic and unyielding pro-Palestine sentiment was predominantly confined to two performances by ‘controversial’ artists; Irish rap group Kneecap and punk rock/hip-hop duo Bob Vylan. That narrative is a far cry from the experience on the ground.

Performers including C-Mat, Lambrini Girls and Black Country, New Road led their audiences in impassioned chants of ‘Free, Free Palestine’. Elsewhere, artists from Jade, Wolf Alice and Amyl and the Sniffers, to The Maccabees and Inhaler, voiced solidarity with Palestine, and called for an end to the genocide. Rizzle Kicks’ Jordan Stephens brought his mother onstage during the band’s Other Stage performance, dancing alongside him waving a Palestine flag and wearing a keffiyeh. She was met with a roar of support from the audience. On Sunday, standing in front of a Cold War Steve-designed backdrop of images from Gaza, British singer-songwriter Nadine Shah read an open letter by Artists for Palestine UK in support of Palestine Action. She closed her set with excerpts of reports by Palestinian journalist Bisan Owda, repeating the words ‘I’m still alive’.

Beyond the stages, widespread support for Palestine was evident in every bar, audience and campsite, scattered with Palestine flags and keffiyehs in every direction. Every day, numerous conversations centred around the sheer magnitude of support for Palestine, a great deal more palpable than the previous year.

Thanks in no small part to the prime minister, Kneecap’s highly anticipated set reached capacity 45 minutes before the trio stepped foot on stage. Arriving at West Holts on Saturday afternoon, just in time to squeeze in before security shut off access to prevent a crush, I was able to watch the show from the back. The energy on the packed periphery was more charged than anything I’d seen at the Pyramid stage. The crowd jumped, chanted and shouted along in exuberant defiance as Kneecap spoke with their characteristically irreverent eloquence about colonialism and Palestine, and led the crowd in chants of ‘Fuck Keir Starmer’.

News of Bob Vylan’s earlier set, marked by chants of “Death, Death to the IDF” travelled fast, and the feeling was triumphant. For a brief moment, in a field at a music festival, it felt as if we lived in a world of sanity, where calling for the dissolution of a genocidal army was not only uncontroversial but the obvious and right thing to do. Where standing on the right side of history was common sense, not something for which to have to fight tooth and nail.

In a week where the state has tried to suppress bands speaking truth to power, proscribed Palestine Action as a terrorist organisation for breaking into an arms factory supplying Israel’s slaughter, and is preparing to try leaders of the Palestine movement Chris Nineham and Ben Jamal for organising a peaceful protest against genocide, performers and festivalgoers alike made it clear where they stand.

Despite the best efforts of the UK government to criminalise the Palestine movement, and the mainstream media’s attempts to characterise Palestine solidarity at Glastonbury as the incendiary rabble-rousing of a few punk bad boys, the hundreds of thousands who attended Glastonbury 2025 went home clear on one thing: the Palestine movement in the UK is stronger and more defiant than ever.