Elton John to perform his last ever UK show at Glastonbury 2023

Elton John has announced that his last ever UK show will take place at next year’s Glastonbury festival.

In the event’s first act to be revealed, John will perform on the Pyramid Stage on Sunday 25 June, closing out the main stage with only his second-ever appearance at a UK festival.

The announcement arrives soon after John played his final US show at Los Angeles’ Dodger Stadium last month, a fittingly grand affair that featured appearances from Dua Lipa, Kiki Dee and Brandi Carlile and was livestreamed on Disney+.

“I couldn’t be more excited to be headlining the Pyramid stage. As the end of my Farewell Yellow Brick Road tour comes into view, there is no more fitting way to say goodbye to my British fans,” John said in a statement. “They have been beyond brilliant, and have supported me through all the highs and lows of my career … I can’t wait to embrace the spirit of the greatest festival in the world.”

Glastonbury co-organiser Emily Eavis added: “We will be closing the festival and marking this huge moment in both of our histories with the mother of all send offs. We are so very happy to finally bring the Rocket Man to Worthy Farm.”

While Glastonbury will supposedly mark John’s final UK show, it won’t be his final show overall – the singer-songwriter’s Farewell Yellow Brick Road tour, which began in 2018, will continue through Europe until July 2023. A show previously booked for Paris’s Accor Arena on 25 June will now take place on 21 June.

John’s Sunday night booking conclusively debunks rumours that Taylor Swift, set to make her return to the stage with her Eras tour in 2023, will be rescheduling her planned 2020 headline slot for next year. As it stands, Swift’s tour dates do not allow for her to play Glastonbury on any night other than 25 June.

Glastonbury 2023 will run from Wednesday 21 June to Sunday 25 June. The price for tickets to the event, which sold out within an hour when they went on sale in early November, was £335 plus booking fee; anyone who joined the deposit scheme for the cancelled 2020 festival ultimately paid £280 plus booking fee to attend this year.

Addressing festivalgoers on Twitter, Eavis said that “enormous rises in the costs of running this vast show” were responsible for the price hike, as well as “the huge financial impact of two years without a festival because of Covid”.

This story was amended on 2 December 2022. An earlier version referred to “2019’s £265 plus booking fee” for Glastonbury tickets. That would have been the price for the 2020 festival, which was cancelled, for those paying a deposit in 2019. The eventual price for those who had paid that deposit, when the festival returned in 2022, was £280 plus booking fee. This has been clarified.