Most popular music festivals in the world.
We analyzed the most popular hashtags to find your favorite music events from across the globe.
Peak music festival season is approaching, and tents will soon be set up in parks, campsites, and stadiums across the globe as eager music lovers prepare to witness their favorite bands.
The popularity of music festivals is not a recent phenomena; people have been getting down and funky in fields for half a century, with Woodstock happening in Bethel, New York in 1969. Now, however, there are other excellent festivals scattered over the globe, with something starting somewhere practically every weekend of the year. Each festival is distinct, with its own style, music genres, and characteristic moods, but the most include camping, resting, and partying.
But with so many events, it’s tough to know where to begin. Is Glastonbury right for you after a barren year? Are you planning anything smaller, such as Lost Village of Standon Calling? Perhaps you’re an international camper with eyes set on Coachella, Sizget, or Primavera Sound? This year, with a little assistance from Instagram, the Hipcamp clan has pooled our resources to determine which music festivals are the world’s favorites. We used the picture sharing platform to determine which music festivals are the most popular based on how often they have been hashtagged on the social media site.
The Results:
Please start a drum roll. Coachella in the United States takes the top place as the most Instagrammed music event in the world, with a staggering 4,201,240 hashtags. It was more than 350,000 hashtags ahead of second-place Tomorrowland, one of Europe’s most well-known events (located in the appropriately named town of Boom in Belgium), with the recently held South by Southwest festival coming in third.
Interestingly, seven of the world’s top ten largest festivals are held in the United States. The winner, whose full name is ‘The Coachella Valley Music and Arts event’, is an annual event situated in the heart of the Colorado Desert in California. It’s popular among celebs, which drives up Instagram interest, and it’s known for its bohemian, laid-back, hipster feel.
Along with Tomorrowland, an electric dance festival held over two weekends with an impressive 3,844,374 hashtags, other notable festivals in the top ten included Rock in Rio in Brazil, one of the world’s largest music festivals with 1.5 million attendees and an impressive 990,110 Instagram photos. This Brazilian giant is a huge hitter—the inaugural Rock in Rio included headliners Queen, Rod Stewart, and AC/DC.
Following Coachella, the top ten most Instagrammed music events worldwide are:
- Tomorrowland, Belgium.
- SXSW: South by Southwest (USA)
- UMF: Ultra Music Festival (USA)
- Burning Man, USA.
- Lollapalooza, USA.
- Rock in Rio, Brazil.
- Glastonbury, UK.
- DC: Electric Daisy Carnival (USA)
- Bonnaroo, USA.
The United States of America is a vast nation with many distinct cultures, customs, and attitudes that mix together to form a complex society—and this variety is evident in the music produced in the country. It is also one of the largest music producers, so it’s no wonder that some of the world’s largest festivals began here. Burning Man, for example, is quite different from Lollapalooza; the former is regarded as an experiment in community and art, as well as creative self-expression, whilst the latter is a festival devoted to punk rock, hip hop, heavy metal, and electronic music.
The top 50 include well-known festivals from all over the globe, including Sziget in Hungary, Summer Sonic in Japan, Benicassim in Spain, and Ultra Korea in South Korea.
Snowbombing in Austria, Latitude in the UK, and even Dimensions Festival in Croatia, which only received 15,163 hashtags, did not reach the top 50 list. Lucca Music Festival in Italy ranked dead last among almost 160 events, with just 38 hashtags.
Top UK festivals
Of course, the UK alone has innumerable music festivals, which may have been pushed out of the top ranks due to the smaller scale of our boutique events. But, with hundreds of campsites strewn over Britain, it’s evident that we Brits like the outdoors and, honestly, don’t mind getting dirty in quest of a wonderful festival experience. That’s why we’ve also looked at the best UK festivals based on Instagram.
Unsurprisingly, Glastonbury has secured the top slot in the UK, with an astounding 731,742 hashtags. This five-day festival, which features the newest music, dance, comedy, drama, circus, cabaret, and more on over 100 stages, need little introduction; tickets for the 2019 festival sold out in only 36 minutes. If you were one of the lucky campers who refreshed their screens to the breaking point and grabbed some festival tickets, you’ll undoubtedly be looking forward to Stormzy, Kylie, Miley, Kamasi, and many more great performers (that don’t always rhyme). Creamfields, Reading and Leeds Festivals, Parklife, Wireless, and Forest Gather in Wales are among the other major UK festivals.
Following Glastonbury, the top ten most Instagrammed music events in the United Kingdom are:
- Creamfields
- Reading.
- Bestival.
- British Summer Time.
- Download.
- Boom Town
- Leeds Festival.
- Boardmasters
- Wireless
Methodology
To construct our ranking of the top 50 music festivals in the globe, we selected a list of 162 of the largest and finest events, culled from innumerable publications and sites identifying the must-see music festivals worldwide.
We next scanned Instagram to see how many posts had been hashtagged with the name of each event, and we rated the festivals based on this figure to get our top 50.
For the UK list, we simply sorted all of the UK events that reached the first list of 162 by the amount of hashtags.
