There's no single "best" festival, as it depends on your interest (music, culture, art, party), but top contenders often include Tomorrowland/Glastonbury (music), Rio Carnival (spectacle), Burning Man (art/expression), and Songkran/Chinese New Year (cultural immersion), with many others like Coachella, Fuji Rock, or local events offering unique experiences in music, tradition, or community.
Best Festivals in the World: 10 Unusual Celebrations and National Customs
Is Glastonbury the biggest festival in the world?
Glastonbury is often called the world's largest greenfield music festival, attracting around 200,000 attendees, but it's not the absolute biggest in overall attendance; festivals like Donauinselfest (Vienna) and Summerfest (Milwaukee) claim higher numbers, with Donauinselfest holding a Guinness World Record for 3.3 million attendees in 2015. While Glastonbury is a global giant for its scale and iconic status, other events, especially free urban festivals or those with multi-day city-wide footprints, can surpass it in sheer visitor count, notes BBC and Heymondo Travel Insurance.
The Festival of Ridván, meaning "the King of Festivals," runs for 12 days to commemorate the 12 days Baha'u'llah spent in the garden of Ridván outside Baghdad. We wish everyone observing a Happy Ridván!
- https://gsp8181.co.uk/glasto I live next to another famous festival site - Coachella (and Stagecoach Festival) and it's (somewhat?) interesting to see they are almost the same size but Glastonbury has 210,000 attendees and Coachella only around 125,000.
1. Inti Raymi, Peru. Peru's Inti Raymi, or “Festival of the Sun”, is one of the country's most vibrant celebrations, held annually during the winter solstice in June. Honouring the Inca sun god, Inti, this ancient celebration symbolises the renewal of life and the hope for a bountiful harvest.
Woodstock. Not only is Woodstock the most iconic event in festival history, the four-day fest attended by over half a million that took over Max Yasgur's upstate New York dairy farm in 1969 is also one of pop culture's most definitive moments.
There will be no Glastonbury Festival in 2026 because the organizers are taking a planned "fallow year" to allow {Worthy Farm} to rest, regenerate the land, and let the dairy cows reclaim their pastures, a tradition held roughly every fifth year to prevent damage and give everyone involved a break. This gives the farmland a chance to recover from the massive event before it returns in 2027.
Coachella takes place in southern California's Colorado Desert over the span of two separate three-day weekends, while Glastonbury is a five-day affair hosted across the pond at Worthy Farm in Somerset, England. And the two wildly different locations attract vastly different attendees.
The NYTimes declared Beyonce' bigger than Coachella this morning saying, “There's not likely to be a more meaningful, absorbing, forceful and radical performance by an American musician this year, or any year soon, than Beyoncé's headlining set at the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival.”
It is also the most awarded festival in the country because of its legacy, popularity, and innovation. Dinagyang received honors and regarded as a World Class Festival and dubbed as the "Queen of all festivals" in the Philippines.
Riḍwān is named for the Garden of Ridván, Baghdad, where Bahá'u'lláh stayed for twelve days after the Ottoman Empire exiled him from the city before he journeyed to Constantinople. It is the holiest Bahá'í festival, and is also referred to as the "Most Great Festival" and the "King of Festivals".
