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63% of acts booked at major UK festivals are all-male, report finds

Data from A2D2 has found that on average three times as many male acts get booked at major festivals

63% of acts booked at the UK music festivals are either male or all-male groups, a new report has found.

The findings from A2D2 have identified that despite Glastonbury making history with more female headliners than male for the first time this year, there is still a lack of gender balance within the line-ups of major festivals.

Analysing the line-ups of the UK’s ten most popular festivals, the data reveals that on average men are getting booked three times as much as women are.

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Creamfields has been labelled as one of the least representative for female artists with 80.9% of its line-up male, 10.6% female and 8.5% mixed-gender and non-binary acts.

Not far behind Creamfields is Parklife which has 76.5% male acts performing at this year’s festival.

Meanwhile TRNSMT Festival is at the top of the list with 31.7% of its line-up female yet men still hold the majority of the roster at 51.2% of exposure.

Across all the festivals in the study, half of them have a percentage with the ‘20s on how many women are on their line-ups whilst only two festivals go above this mark into the 30% mark.

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Peter Fealey, founder of A2D2 shares: "It's 2024, and it's disappointing to see such an imbalance”.

Fealey continues: "There's a wealth of incredible female talent out there, and festival lineups should reflect the diversity of the music scene. From my X years experience working as a sound engineer, it’s also sad to see so few females in the crew as well.”

See the full breakdown of the gender split at UK festivals in 2024 below and read the full report here.

Becky Buckle is Mixmag's Multimedia Editor, follow her on Twitter