Legendary band won’t play this music festival due to ‘politics,’ member says
Brian May has reiterated that Queen will never play Glastonbury due to guitarist's longstanding political differences with the festival's founder, Michael Eavis.
"I wouldn't do Glastonbury next year because of the politics of the people who run it," May said in a recent interview with Daily Mail . "Unless that changes, I won't do it."
May, a longtime animal welfare activist, has taken issue with Eavis's stance on badger culling, The Independent reported .
Badger culling, a controversial government policy in the U.K., is aimed at controlling the spread of bovine tuberculosis (bTB) from badgers to cattle and involves the licensed removal of large badger populations in high-risk areas through shooting or trapping.
Eavis, who is also a dairy farmer, previously labeled May as a "danger to farming" and scrutinized him for opposing badger culling, according to The Independent.
"They like killing badgers, and they think it's for sport and that's something I cannot support because we've been trying to save these badgers for years, and they are still being killed for years, so that's the reason we're missing out on it," May told Daily Mail.
The music icon also alluded to the fact that Queen has never been asked to perform at Glastonbury because of May's political views.
"I don't think the conversation of us doing has ever taken place because they know how I feel," he told Daily Mail. "I don't know when Queen will be back on stage, it's an unknown we'll take it day by day."
May had previously said in a 2019 BBC Radio 2 interview that Queen would not perform at Glastonbury unless "things changed radically," adding, "there are lots of reasons for that," per the Independent.
"One is that Michael Eavis has frequently insulted me and I don't really particularly enjoy that," he said. "What bothers me more is that he is in favor of the badger cull, which I regard as a tragedy and unnecessary crime against wildlife."
Glastonbury is considered the U.K.'s biggest music festival, attracting more than 200,000 attendees annually. Held at near Pilton, Somerset in England, Glastonbury features massive headliners such as The 1975, Neil Young and the Chrome Hearts and Olivia Rodrigo for last year's festival .
Glastonbury is taking a planned "fallow year" for 2026, meaning the festival won't happen as to give the land at Worthy Farm a rest. The event will return in 2027.
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