BBC says it "will not ban" Kneecap from Glastonbury 2025 broadcast

The BBC has said it "will not ban" Kneecap from its Glastonbury 2025 broadcast, following calls from MPs to prevent the Irish rap trio from performing at this year's festival. 

Earlier this week, Glastonbury confirmed that Kneecap would be performing on the West Holts stage, a festival-curated stage that the BBC broadcasts from live during the festival weekend — alongside the Other Stage, the Park Stage, the Pyramid Stage, and more. 

The confirmation comes after weeks of calls from MPs to remove the trio from the Glastonbury 2025 line-up due to backlash over two resurfaced clips of the band performing in 2023 and 2024 — the former reportedly capturing a member of the band shouting: "Kill your local MP."

Read this next: Kneecap removed from TRSNMT Festival line-up following “police concern”

The latter, which allegedly captured Kneecap's Mo Chara waving a Hezbollah flag on stage in London, resulted in the rapper being charged under the Terrorism Act by the Metropolitan Police — the artist, real name Liam Óg Ó hAnnaidh, will appear at Westminster Magistrates Court on June 18.

In a statement to The i Paper, the broadcaster said it "doesn't ban artists", but would "ensure that our programming will meet our editorial guidelines. Decisions about our broadcast output will be made in the lead-up to the festival.”

Read this next: UK government leaders call for Kneecap to be removed from festival line-ups

According to NME, the BBC's guidelines prohibit “unjustifiably offensive language” and typically veers away from political statements in order to maintain balance — so while the performance may be broadcast in full live, it could be edited before being uploaded to iPlayer or come with an additional warning.

While a number of political figures have called for Kneecap's removal from festival line-ups this summer, the band have so far only been prevented from performing at Scotland's TRSNMT Festival due to "police concerns", while they went ahead with their scheduled headline slot at London's Wide Awake Festival last month.

Kneecap recently announced their biggest show outside of Ireland, with the trio set to perform at London's OVO Arena on September 18. 

Megan Townsend is Mixmag's Deputy Editor, follow on Twitter