Arriving at a festival without a group looks harder from the sofa than it feels in the queue at the gates. You will wait for the same wristband check as everyone else, carry the same awkward tent bag and head for the same stage, and some of the people beside you will have come alone too. A little groundwork before you travel makes the first night much easier.
That groundwork comes down to four jobs: finding a few people to say hello to, knowing where help is on site, planning for a phone that may not work, and keeping your online conversations sensible. None of it takes long, and nearly all of it can be done from home in the weeks before you leave.
Find your people before you arrive
Start with the festival’s own website, app and social accounts, since they carry current information and point to any official groups. One first-timer’s guide to Glastonbury says the Glasto Facebook group has meet-up threads for solo travellers, and regulars on the eFestivals forum have run a Camp Solo group for people going alone, with a WhatsApp chat so members can get to know each other first. Ticket-resale and “who is going?” threads work in a similar way, and posting your name, intended campsite and arrival day gives people something to reply to.
A shared favourite band gives strangers something to talk about, so fan groups for a particular headliner are worth joining as well. Some adults also spend the weeks before an event chatting on sites like Camloo or in those fan groups to find some company. Random video chat of that kind is for people aged 18 and over, so teenagers heading to a festival should stick to the festival’s own channels.
Make friends on site and know where help is
Your campsite choice shapes who you meet. The same Glastonbury guide points out that some campsites are loud and close to the action while others are quieter and further out, so pick the end that suits how often you want a neighbour to say hello. A folding chair outside the tent gives people a reason to stop and talk, and a recent price comparison of camping chairs found one for £7 at B&M, the cheapest of the high-street retailers it checked.
Queues for food and water give people something to talk about. Workshops are easier places to start a conversation than a packed main stage, and a Dazed guide to going solo also recommends volunteering as a way to meet many people at once. On your first day, look up the welfare, medical and information points in the festival’s app or programme. Safer Spaces, a volunteer-led UK community interest company founded in 2021 by sisters Anna MacGregor and Madeleine North, sends trained outreach teams to festivals, with a tent where people can report incidents and get support, so check whether your festival has one.
The Loop, which has provided drug checking at UK events since 2016, tested substances at festivals including Parklife, Love Saves the Day and Lost Village in 2025. That back-of-house work covered substances that had been found, confiscated or handed in at amnesty bins, so read your festival’s welfare page to see what testing it offers, if any.
Stay in touch when the signal drops
Plan as if your phone will be unreliable at the busiest times. Agree a meeting point that will not move, such as a fixed landmark, with a backup time an hour later, and send short messages instead of making calls. Screenshot your ticket, the site map and your campsite name before you leave home, since you may not be able to load them on site. If you do lose each other, go to the agreed landmark at the backup time and wait there rather than searching the crowd.
Battery is the other half of staying reachable. A guide to festival power banks recommends around 20,000mAh for a camping weekend and fast charging over USB-C Power Delivery, which suits a phone doing duty as ticket, map and torch. Switch the phone to low-power mode, and tell someone at home when you will next check in so that a quiet day does not worry anybody. Sharing your live location with someone you trust at home also helps if you lose touch for a few hours.
Keep your online habits sensible
The same rules cover a festival Facebook group, a resale thread and a one-to-one chat with someone you have never met. Keep the first conversations in the public thread or in the festival app, where other people can see them. Hold back your surname, home address, workplace, ticket barcode and exact pitch until you have met in daylight in a busy spot, and tell a friend who you are meeting and where. If a conversation keeps pushing for personal details or payment, end it and leave the group thread if you need to.
Never send money to someone you have only met online, whether it is a deposit for a pitch, a ticket or a car-share fee paid in advance. The long-standing police advice on ticket fraud is to buy only from the venue’s box office, the promoter, an official agent or a well-known, reputable ticket exchange, and to avoid bank transfers to people you do not know, because a credit card or payment service gives you a better chance of getting the money back. Glastonbury, for one, runs its own official resale for returned tickets.
If you are caught out, report it to Report Fraud, the national service run by the City of London Police that has replaced Action Fraud for England, Wales and Northern Ireland. Anyone in Scotland should call Police Scotland on 101.
Before you set off, join one group and agree a check-in time with someone at home. Pack a spare charging cable as well. Then, on the first evening, walk round the campsite and ask the neighbours which band they came to see.
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