‘Intense and fleeting' – how festival friendships can touch your soul (and change your life)

The Guardian

3 hours ago

There's something strange and magical that happens at Glastonbury. One minute you're in the queue for halloumi fries, minding your own business, and the next you're deep in conversation with someone you've just met, bonding over your mutual fear of missing a secret Four Tet set.
You might not know their surname (or even their real name) but for one golden weekend, they become your person. I've seen it happen more times than I can count. From the half-shouted conversations between strangers at the front of the Pyramid stage, to my friend's thoroughly modern romance with a gorgeous man in a wedding dress. She became his groom for the night; they cruised the festival together in blissful fancy-dress harmony. But by morning he'd gone full runaway bride and vanished. More than 10 years later, she still refers to him as 'the one that got away'.
Such stories used to be all too common, with countless intense, fleeting festival friendships lost to the crowd. But since Vodafone teamed up with Glastonbury to boost connectivity at Worthy Farm, it's become so much easier to connect with and keep track of suddenly made friends. The free Official Glastonbury 2025 app, powered by Vodafone, offers lineup sharing and, new for this year, live location sharing to help people stay in touch with friends old and new.
For 30-year-old Katrina Mirpuri, a chance encounter at Glastonbury became the start of something lasting. 'In 2024, I went to Arrivals, which was Glastonbury's first dedicated South Asian stage,' she says. 'It had a curated lineup of DJs and artists, and by the side of the stage there was an area where you could sit and hang out. That's where I ended up making this amazing friend called Yash – we literally sat next to one another on a bench and got chatting.'
Hours passed. Their conversation meandered from 'cultural values to relationships and marriage – everything', she says. They swapped numbers before parting ways that evening, and a year on, they still meet for drinks in London.
'The whole experience made me feel really grateful to be at the festival. Even though it's so huge, I think you can connect with people really easily. There are spaces that invite you to have conversations that you might not get to have in everyday life. I definitely think we hit it off because we were in an area that catered for and represented our culture. It gave us a grounding to start talking.'
It's a sentiment echoed by Natasha Hannawin, 29, who had a chance meeting at her first Glastonbury in 2018 that went on to change her life for ever.
'If you meet at somewhere like Glastonbury,' she muses, 'I think you can safely say you'll have a few things in common, which always makes it easier to form a friendship.'
That year, she'd signed up to volunteer with Oxfam. 'I got a really good gig, actually, because I was one of the stewards on an artist's vehicle gate – I checked Solange's wristband, which is my claim to fame,' she laughs.
It was during a 12-hour night shift that she got chatting to a man working for site services. 'I think I won him over with my millions of questions about food – asking: 'If you were going to go to this restaurant, what would you order?' You know, all that mindless chit-chat that gets you through a night shift.'
The next day they arranged to meet up with their respective friendship groups. 'We just talked a lot about the music, who we were excited to see, that kind of stuff.' By the end of the weekend, something had clicked. They stayed in touch, and by the end of the summer, they were in a relationship.
'I don't think either of us is particularly confident,' Natasha says. 'In fact, we were both probably quite nervous, shy people but I think it worked out as well as it did because we were thrown together randomly in this low-pressure environment.'
A year later, they returned to Glastonbury as a couple. Now, seven years after their first shared night shift, they're planning their wedding.
'There'll be lots of nods to Glastonbury in our wedding,' Natasha says. 'I think we're going to call our top table Worthy Farm. It's a nice story to tell people – and inevitably they always end up telling us about all the random friendships they've made through the festival too.'
Connecting friends to the best of British summerVodafone has been connecting people to the places and things they love since 1984 – that's why it is The Nation's Network.
As Glastonbury's official connectivity partner, Vodafone is proud to support the festival's charity partners including Oxfam, Greenpeace and WaterAid by donating sim cards and battery packs to keep volunteers connected and fully charged.
Even when the friendship only lasts the length of the festival, it can leave a real imprint. One of 36-year-old Pip's most vivid memories is of making 'a completely random friend on the last night of my first Glastonbury'.
The group he'd travelled with had left on Sunday, so he decided to go it alone. 'I just got chatting to this guy who was dancing by himself on a patch of grass and we ended up hanging out together for that whole night. We didn't swap numbers or try to stay in touch but we just had such a fun time.'
It set the tone for the whole experience. 'I left the next day feeling really full of love for the whole experience. It's so rare to connect like that, without expectation or pressure – it's genuinely heartwarming.'
For 59-year-old Katy, festivals, and Glastonbury in particular, offered not just connection, but transformation. 'I was 46 when I first volunteered at a festival. I was at a bit of a funny life stage – people get busy with parenthood, work and family, and your friendships can change quite a lot in your 40s and 50s. I had some parent friends, but as they get older, you start to realise that maybe the only thing you had in common were your children.'
Knowing she loved live music, she signed up to volunteer. 'That kind of started things off for me. In 2016 I volunteered at my first Glastonbury and it was incredible.'
The friendships she formed that weekend have since become like family. 'It's opened a whole other world for me.'
She now returns most years as part of a network of volunteers supporting charities such as Oxfam and WaterAid, often attending solo and meeting up with people she's met through the community. As they go about their work, the volunteers can rely on Vodafone's support – it donates free sim cards and battery packs to help keep them connected and fully charged.
Katy says: 'Glastonbury changed my life for the better and I hope I can continue to do it for a lot longer. It's an amazing place to go to solo because there are so many groups where you instantly feel welcomed.'
And best of all, fleeting encounters no longer have to be lost to the mist. The Official Glastonbury app is making it easier to keep those new connections going and help you find that new friend dancing near the front in a sea of sequins. Whether it's for one magical night or for the rest of your life, one thing's for sure, the friendships you make at Glastonbury will stay with you long after the music stops.
Vodafone, connecting you to Glastonbury this summerThe Official Glastonbury 2025 app is available now! Download the free app, powered by Vodafone
For privacy, some surnames have been withheld