Volunteer at UK festivals, how it works and the roles open now

How it works

Most UK festivals fill their stewarding, campaigning and shop teams through a handful of volunteer operators, and the deal is the same everywhere. You apply, you pay a deposit, you work two to three shifts of about eight hours across the weekend, and in return you get entry to the festival, a crew campsite, usually meals or meal tickets, and your deposit back once your shifts are done. Miss a shift and you lose the deposit. That is the whole model, and it has not changed since the years when this site listed festival roles every summer.

The rules that apply almost everywhere

Age. You must be 18 on the day you arrive for stewarding with every major operator. One exception: DC Site Services takes 16 year olds for litter, cleaning and waste roles, and 18 for stewarding and traffic.
Deposit. Paid when you sign up, refunded after the festival if you completed every shift, usually within a month or six weeks.
Shifts. Two or three shifts of about eight hours at a camping festival, spread across the days, some of them at night; one shift at a day show.
Places go fast. Applications open in the winter and spring, on a first come first served basis, and the popular festivals fill quickly.

Who runs it, in 2026

Oxfam Festivals. The largest. Stewards work three shifts of eight and a quarter hours; campaigners four daytime shifts of six hours; shop volunteers one six-hour shift a day. Deposit £250 for a weekend festival, £50 for a day event. You camp on the Oxfield with showers, hot water and meal tickets. The 2026 list includes Boomtown, Boardmasters, Latitude, Leeds, Reading, Wilderness, Womad, Shambala, Isle of Wight, Mighty Hoopla and Field Day. Glastonbury is taking a break in 2026 and returns in 2027. festivals.oxfam.org.uk
Hotbox Events. Download, Reading, Leeds, Latitude, Camp Bestival Dorset and Forbidden Forest in 2026. Three eight-hour shifts, deposit £95 for a first festival and £45 if you have volunteered with them before, refunded within 30 days of the last festival, with free staff camping, parking, crew showers and catering. hotboxevents.com
My Cause UK. Deposit tied to the ticket price, between £50 and £380, returned within a month minus a six per cent administration fee, with a meal ticket per shift. mycauseuk.com
Festaff. A £20 bond plus a £15 administration fee for camping festivals (£10 for day shows), returned after the season; mostly two eight-hour shifts. Applications for 2027 open in February. festaff.co.uk
DC Site Services. Site crew rather than stewards: litter, cleaning and waste from 16, stewarding and traffic from 18, at Boardmasters, Leeds, Beat-Herder, Big Feastival and Mighty Hoopla among others. dcsiteservices.com
The charities’ own crews at Glastonbury. WaterAid, Greenpeace, Shelter and Oxfam each run their own volunteer teams there; Greenpeace asks for five shifts of six to eight hours with crew camping and three meals a day. The next Glastonbury is in 2027.

Is it worth it?

Yes, if you treat it as work with a very good staff party attached. A shift on a gate or a campsite at two in the morning is not glamorous. What you get is entry to a festival you could not otherwise afford, a crew of people who come back year after year, and hours that count. The old advice on this site still holds: sleep before your night shift, pack for rain, and do the shifts you signed up for, because the deposit is real money.

Recording the hours

If the organisation you volunteered with is on Vinspired, log the hours and it confirms them; Oxfam, for one, is on the platform. If it is not, add the volunteering with a referee from the crew who can confirm it. Either way the hours count towards your certificates and badges.

From the archive

The charity that ran this site before 2018 sent people to festivals every summer and wrote about it. Five pieces that still read well:

Deposits, shifts and festival lists were checked on the operators’ own pages on 13 September 2026 and change every year; check the operator before you pay.