**Revamped Glastonbury App Aims to Transform Festival Experience with Live Location Sharing and Step Tracking**
Festival-goers heading to this year’s Glastonbury Festival can expect a more interconnected and convenient experience thanks to a freshly upgraded official app, introduced by telecoms giant Vodafone. With the 2025 edition slated to kick off on 25 June, over 210,000 attendees at Worthy Farm are set to benefit from a suite of new digital features designed to meet both practical and social needs on the sprawling 900-acre site.
A standout feature for 2025 is the introduction of live location sharing. This advancement enables friends and family to track each other in real time on the event map, addressing a long-standing pain point at a festival renowned for its vastness and dense crowds. The new tool is anticipated to significantly reduce the time individuals spend searching for companions across the site’s maze of tents, stages, and marquees.
Additionally, step count tracking is making its debut as part of the app’s “My Highlights” post-festival report. This functionality will enable festival attendees to reflect on the distance covered amid the music, art, and culture, often stretching into tens of thousands of steps over the event’s five-day duration. This seemingly playful addition also has a social dimension, with Vodafone linking it to their “everyone.connected” campaign, underscoring social impact as a key part of their partnership with Glastonbury.
Returning in an improved form is the Shared Line-ups feature, which now automatically updates line-ups between friends. Festival-goers can not only see where their group members plan to be but can also join, switch, or plan meet-ups based on evolving sets and schedules. This streamlines social planning and aims to ensure no one misses their favourite act due to miscommunication or last-minute schedule changes.
Navigation is further simplified by an enhanced map search function. Revellers can now easily hunt down everything from global cuisines and camping facilities to merch stalls and hidden performance spaces, helping seasoned veterans and first-timers alike get the most from the festival’s extensive offerings.
While several major features are new, the app retains popular tools from its previous incarnation. These include tailored music recommendations influenced by each user’s Spotify history, the ability to pin points of interest such as tents or food trucks, and on-the-fly alerts to help manage schedule clashes when two favourite acts perform simultaneously.
Last year, the Glastonbury app saw over 226,000 downloads. Notably, some 89% originated from those present onsite, while a notable minority of home viewers also made use of the features to enhance their experience from afar. This figure underlines the growing role that digital resources play even at events defined by their live atmosphere and communal spirit.
Vodafone UK’s chief brand officer, Maria Koutsoudakis, commented on the update: “Our team knows just how crucial the app has become in shaping the Glastonbury experience. This year, we’ve taken further steps to help people stay connected and enjoy every moment with their friends and loved ones. With greater network capacity on site and unique features like the new step counter, we’re excited to support both the practical and social aspects of festival life.”
The company also announced that its Connect & Charge tent will return for 2025, providing free phone charging and open WiFi—an increasingly vital service as festival-goers rely on their devices for photos, social media, navigation, and now, tracking steps.
Glastonbury’s ongoing partnership with Vodafone reflects a wider trend among major UK events, where organisers and sponsors are harnessing technology to enhance visitor experience while reinforcing social and environmental values intrinsic to the festival’s identity.
The updated Glastonbury app is available free of charge for both iOS and Android users. As the festival landscape evolves, digital tools such as these are swiftly becoming as essential to the experience as wellington boots and glitter face paint. Whether this marks a new era in festival culture or simply provides peace of mind for those braving the crowds, the coming days at Worthy Farm will surely put these innovations to the test.