Festival Goers complaints
10 Music Festival Complaints revealed, Festivals are built on the promise of unforgettable weekends, shared euphoria, and boundary-pushing creativity. But behind the marketing, a different reality often emerges. Year after year, the same complaints resurface. These aren’t minor annoyances—they’re repeated failures that chip away at the experience. And with rising ticket prices and increasingly vocal audiences, expectations have never been higher.
From hygiene to harassment, queues to curation, these are the top 10 complaints festivalgoers most often raise—based on attendee feedback, post-event reviews, and coverage across multiple outlets.
10 Music Festival Complaints list
1. Overcrowding and Safety Failures
Despite months of planning, festivals still let overcrowding spiral out of control. Entry gates crush fans together. Walkways clog. Set changes cause dangerous bottlenecks. These problems affect both UK and international events.
Organisers cram people into areas that can’t handle the flow. Crowd movement often lacks direction. Even after the pandemic—when space should’ve mattered more—festivals still ignore safe capacity. Astroworld’s tragedy made the risks heartbreakingly clear.
2. Endless Queues Everywhere
Fans spend far too long waiting in queues—at entry points, bars, toilets, and food stands. Poor signage and unclear directions only make the delays worse.
At Reading and Boardmasters, food queues stretched well past an hour. When festivals don’t spread vendors across the site or prepare staff for peak hours, fans suffer the consequences.
3. Dirty Toilets and Bad Hygiene
Toilets often smell terrible, overflow, or lack basic hygiene. Some don’t even get cleaned daily. Attendees frequently report a shortage of toilet paper, soap, or working taps.
By Sunday, the state of most festival toilets makes people avoid them altogether. It’s unacceptable, especially when tickets now cost hundreds of pounds.
4. Expensive Food and Drink
Festival food pricing has become a joke. A small portion of chips or a can of lager can cost over £10. While inflation affects suppliers, many organisers use it to justify extortionate prices.
Worse, many festivals ban outside food or drink, forcing attendees to buy overpriced meals for days. Budgeting for a full weekend now feels like planning a holiday.
5. Weak Lineups with Repetitive Acts
Lineups at some major festivals feel repetitive, uninspired, or overly commercial. The same headliners often reappear across multiple events and years.
Fans want discovery—not just the same chart-toppers. Some festivals, like Glastonbury, still mix legacy acts with fresh talent. But others offer little beyond algorithm-safe bookings.
6. Harassment and Unsafe Environments
Sexual harassment remains one of the most serious issues at festivals. Female and non-binary attendees often share stories of groping, stalking, or verbal abuse.
Campaigns like “Safe Gigs for Women” have raised awareness. Still, many festivals provide minimal support or poorly trained staff. Security should protect—not dismiss—victims. Everyone deserves to feel safe in a crowd.
7. Terrible Camping Conditions
Camping should enhance the adventure, but at many festivals it turns into a nightmare. Uneven ground, flooded tents, muddy walkways, and broken facilities often dominate the experience.
Campers pay premium prices for “VIP” upgrades only to discover overcrowded glamping fields and long walks to toilets or stages.
8. Poor Sound Quality or Technical Failures
When headline sets sound like they’re underwater or a mic cuts out halfway through, it kills the vibe. Some festivals clearly underinvest in audio gear or overbook without enough stage support.
Wireless interference, bad acoustics, or volume restrictions often ruin entire performances. For many fans, the music is the main draw—and poor sound is unforgivable.
9. Environmental Negligence
Despite greenwashing, many festivals still leave behind mountains of plastic, abandoned tents, and litter. Some do little to promote reusable cups or waste sorting.
Boomtown and Shambala lead on sustainability, but others lag far behind. Organisers need to take real responsibility—not just slap a recycling logo on a leaflet.
10. Zero Phone Signal or App Failures
In rural locations, signal strength usually disappears by noon on Friday. That’s fine—until festival apps crash or maps go missing. Friends get separated, plans fall apart, and set clashes go unnoticed.
While disconnection can be freeing, essential info shouldn’t rely on patchy mobile networks. Organisers must provide offline tools or better Wi-Fi options.
What Can Be Done?
These issues aren’t new. But with social media amplifying every misstep, the stakes are higher. Poor experiences don’t stay quiet. According to post-event surveys from several UK festivals, nearly one in three attendees say they wouldn’t return due to poor logistics alone.
But there’s a roadmap for change. Festival organisers who listen—then act—are already seeing results. Improvements in crowd control, sanitation, booking diversity, and health services are not only possible. Audiences are ready to celebrate again, but they want to feel safe, respected, and seen.
Choose Better, Plan Smarter
Fans can take steps too. Opting for smaller or boutique festivals may reduce many of these issues. Events with focused programming and better infrastructure are being praised for delivering where the giants fall short. If camping isn’t appealing, consider booking nearby hotels.
Final Thoughts
Festivals are supposed to bring people together through music, discovery, and joy. But sometimes, they leave behind disappointment. By listening to these most common complaints—raised repeatedly by fans, critics, and communities—organisers have the tools to rebuild trust. It’s no longer enough to simply sell a ticket.
Related reading: Check out UK Music Venues in Decline to explore how venue closures echo these issues on a smaller scale or read about the upcoming Beatherder Festival known as a small boutique Festival.
10 Music Festival Complaints
