Glastonbury Festival will go ahead this year as a global livestream event

Glastonbury Festival will look very different this year, but at least we won't have to worry about the usual scramble to book tickets — this time around, capacity is unlimited.

On Wednesday morning, Glastonbury Festival announced on Twitter that it will return as a global livestream event in 2021, following its cancellation last year due to the coronavirus pandemic.

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Live at Worthy Farm will take place in multiple timezones over five hours on Saturday, May 22, with tickets costing £20 ($27.50). Artists on the bill include Coldplay, Damon Albarn, Haim, Idles, Jorja Smith, Kano, Michael Kiwanuka, and Wolf Alice, along with special guests, who will be staged around the famous festival site. The event's broadcast, which will reportedly take viewers throughout various parts like the Pyramid Stage, is set to be directed by Paul Dugdale, responsible for filming Taylor Swift and Ariana Grande's tours for Netflix.

This move to a virtual festival isn't a complete surprise. Last year, to celebrate Glastonbury's 50th anniversary following the actual festival's cancellation, the BBC aired a special that combined live performances with archived footage. More than 10 million people tuned in.

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It's no surprise that given those huge viewing figures, and with the prospect of a second fallow year, Glastonbury's organisers have decided to try their hands at a virtual concert — especially with other festivals, like SXSW, already making moves to recreate the experience online.

Are livestreamed music festivals here to stay? Time will tell. But for 2021, it's certainly looking like the main flavour.