Most important things to pack
Your festival ticket
I’m not sure there’s a worse feeling than turning up at Reading Festival after an eight-hour journey to realise you’ve left your ticket at home. Get that thing safely packed in your bag before you pack anything else!
Bank cards and cash
You can now pay for most things at Reading Festival with a contactless bank card or with a smartphone that supports contactless payments, so you don’t need to bring hundreds of pounds in cash and risk losing it. You’ll still find a few things where you’ll need some old fashioned paper (or plastic?) money though, so bringing a small cash supply with you might help you avoid the cash machine fees (and queues!) on site.
Tent
Get a decent quality tent you can use again and again and make sure there’s enough room inside for yourself and all your stuff. Try to avoid single-layer dome or pop-up tents which usually start to leak when it rains. Practise putting it up and packing it away at home.
The sun rises very early at Reading Festival as it’s just after the summer equinox (think 5am-ish!), so a ‘blackout’-lined tent will go a long way to keep the light and heat of the morning sun from waking you up before you’re ready. Other features to look out for include a decent porch or ‘living’ area and multiple bedrooms if you’ll be sharing as a group. Get one with enough room to (almost) stand up and it’ll make your festival life much easier, especially when you’re getting changed.
RELATED: The best festival tents for just you, a couple or a group
Sleeping bag
It might be summer but it can still get pretty cold in the early hours, so make sure you’ve got a reasonably good sleeping bag to keep you warm and toasty. A decent one should draw moisture away too, so you don’t wake up all sweaty – pretty crucial at Reading Festival where there are very, very few showers to go around.
RELATED: The best sleeping bags for British festivals
Self-inflating roll mat
We’ve tried airbeds and tried all sorts of roll mats and most of our team agrees self-inflating roll mats are the best thing to put underneath your sleeping bag at a festival. They’re much lighter to carry than airbeds and don’t leak or require a pump – or any manual labour! Reading Festival is big – you’ll have to walk much further from your coach or your car to your campsite than most other festivals, so the less weight you’ve got to carry the better.
Just unscrew the cap then replace it once the mat fills with a layer of air. Take the cap off again and squeeze the air out, then roll it up and replace the cap to take it home. Easy. You won’t get ‘seasick’ trying to fall asleep like you might on an airbed either.
RELATED: The best roll mats for festivals – 2022 edition
A proper rucksack
As above, Reading Festival is big. You’ll have to walk far with your stuff, so you don’t wanna be struggling along with three different school backpacks. You definitely don’t want to drag a wheeled suitcase along, it’s unlikely to survive the walk if it’s dry and you’ve got absolutely no hope if it’s even a little bit muddy.
Get yourself a proper camping rucksack from an outdoor shop and it’ll make your life much easier. It should last for years and a good one will let you attach your roll mat and sleeping bag to the outside – as well as having enough room inside for all your clothes, food, spare shoes, gadgets and pretty much anything else you can think of.
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Reusable water bottles
Reading Festival banned plastic bottles ahead of the 2019 festival, and while you can still buy water in aluminium cans, you’re much better off grabbing a few reusable bottles and refilling them from the hundreds of free refill points scattered around the site.
You’ll save money, save the planet and you’ll quickly realise a decent, steel reusable bottle keeps your drink way cooler than a plastic bottle. You definitely need at least one and you’ll be able to buy them on-site if you forget, but I normally take a few with me. One that’s convenient to carry around, a big one to keep in the tent and a couple of others for stuff like mixing your own alcoholic drinks.
RELATED: The best reusable water bottles for festivals
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A sturdy trolley
While many make do without, some people find a trolley to be absolutely essential for getting your tent, beer and everything else into the festival. Because Reading Festival is so massive, and often involves a queue to get in, you’re much more likely to need a trolley than you would be at a smaller festival.
The flipside of this is that any trolley you do bring must be up to the task, and even in dry weather, most folding trolleys won’t hold up over the distance you’ll cover. Get yourself a solid, metal trolley with air-filled pneumatic wheels and make sure you only load it to HALF the recommended maximum weight. That should still get you a few crates of beer at a time, but the recommended max weight of any trolley is based on going a few metres across a patio, not a few miles through rough fields.
RELATED: Where can you buy a good festival trolley?
Chair
If your campsite has fewer chairs than people, it’s gonna suck. Make sure you’ve got a decent camping chair, with armrests and a cup holder ideally. They’re also good if you’re waiting in the queue for the festival to open or for chilling towards the back of a crowd watching bands all day.
ID / proof of age
Reading Festival operates a ‘Challenge 25’ policy, so unless you’re really confident there’s not a chance you look under 25, you’ll need to bring some ID to prove you’re 18 when buying alcohol or other age-restricted items.
If you bought your ticket as part of a coach travel package, you’ll need photo ID to claim your festival ticket once on the coach.
Food and drink
Biscuits and cereal bars
Cereal bars will keep you alive until you have the energy to sort out proper food. Biscuits are good too, just don’t crush them.
Alcohol
You’ll need more alcohol for Reading Festival than pretty much any other festival, as there’s no separation between the arenas or stages and the campsites. Most festivals have security checkpoints as you leave the campsites and make you buy drinks from the bars inside the arena, but at Glasto’ everything is intertwined. You can walk around all day watching music with a bag full of cans.
Find out which supermarket has the best deals on your choice of cans and spirits, then stock up. Remember you can’t bring any glass into the festival.
Something to keep things cold in
Some people obsess over crazy plans to keep their beers cold in a hot field. My advice would be to buy something that tastes as bad warm as it does cold – Fosters ideally. Others try burying their cans or filling a bucket with water. If you’re a bit of a Tory, you might want to spend loads of money on a nice cooler or cool bag, then spend every day buying ice from an on-site shop to keep it cold.
A few of my friends bought Titan ‘deep freeze’ cool bags online before the relentlessly hot Reading Festival 2019 and seemed pleased with themselves. They sell a 16-can cool bag or a huge 60-can capacity cooler with big wheels and everything.
Stove or kettle
I have never taken a stove to a festival, or even a kettle, but some people do and enjoy cooking in the campsite, so if that’s you don’t forget it.
Tea and coffee
Only if you’re taking a stove and a kettle, though. Traders generally don’t like people asking for hot water, although a few will sell you some.
Toiletries and hygiene
Washable flannel
Don’t bring baby wipes, even ones marked plastic-free or biodegradable. Reading Festival say they’d like people to use alternatives as even plant-based wipes release greenhouse gases when they decompose. Bring a facecloth or flannel instead.
Suncream
You can get sunburn through the clouds while it’s raining at Reading Festival. Honestly. Don’t decide not to bother bringing suncream. It’s always a mistake.
I always use the dry mist spray sun protection at festivals, because I hate the sticky feeling from normal suncream at the best of times and can’t handle it at a festival without a shower. A can usually lasts all summer for me and aluminium is generally better for recycling than a fully plastic bottle.
Toothbrush and toothpaste
Don’t buy a bamboo ‘festival toothbrush’ thinking you’re helping the environment. You’ve already got a toothbrush at home, hopefully, so bring that one – unless it’s a really expensive one you don’t want to risk losing or breaking.
Fair enough if you don’t want to bring your fancy supersonic toothbrush, buy something cheaper to use at festivals. And yeah, in this case, bamboo is probably better than plastic. Just try to find a decent quality one that’ll last longer than the five days.
Toilet roll
Bring some normal toilet roll, not those ‘flushable’ wipes – they don’t mix well with festival toilets. Reading Festival’s awesome lockups usually give out toilet roll for free – but you won’t find any in the toilets themselves, ever, so you’re definitely best off bringing some with you.
Deodorant
Ideally, just bring the deodorant you’re using day-to-day at home and don’t go out to buy a miniature one for Reading Festival.
Hand sanitiser
If you can find any, that is. You don’t see much plastic-free hand sanitiser around, unfortunately, but this one is part of the official advice for keeping coronavirus (and many other things!) at bay – and I’m not going to tell you to ignore that. Hopefully, the bottle is recyclable, at least.
Dry shampoo or waterless washing kit
The only public showers at Reading Festival are usually in the Greenpeace fields and the Kids Field, so most people will be going without. You might want to bring something to freshen your hair up in that time. Find an eco-friendly product to wash without water – or just get a friend to fill a bucket!
Towel
You’ll need a towel with some of the waterless wash kits, but they’re worth bringing even if you’re not taking anything like that.
Condoms
I’m sure you can get them on site but they’re probably not something you want to queue for. You’re better off buying them online anyway.
First aid kit / plasters
Might save you a trip to the medical centre. Turns out biodegradable bamboo plasters are a thing now.
Rennies
Do you know heartburn? You don’t want to know it at a festival when you’re miles from the nearest shop. Bring some Rennies or a supermarket own-brand equivalent.
Medicine
Ibuprofen? Paracetamol? Imodium? Probably all good shouts. Make sure you’ve got any prescription medication too and check out Reading Festival’s policy on them here.
Camping extras
Duct tape
Ideally, you’d be able to find some eco-friendly and plastic-free tape with the strength for any makeshift tent repairs. Unfortunately, I haven’t found any yet, so if you’re trying to make your tent last a little bit longer rather than replace it, maybe it’s worth using a little bit of tape.
Carrier bags
It doesn’t matter if they’re plastic if you’re reusing a stash you’ve got at home anyway. They’ll be useful for keeping dirty or wet clothes separate inside your tent or bag, among many other things.
Blankets
If you’re up for making the effort to bring extra blankets, it’s always nicer in a tent with more blankets. Makes the place feel much more cosy which definitely helps keep you warmer.
Earplugs
There are two main types of earplugs you might want at a festival. Some to block as much noise as possible to help you sleep and some to protect your eardrums while you listen to loud music. These special earplugs let music pass through clearly while blocking harmful sounds. Check out our recommendations here.
Eye mask
Reading Festival takes place just after the summer solstice, which means it starts getting light pretty soon after 4am. This doesn’t bother everyone, but some people can’t sleep through it, so if you haven’t got a tent with blackout lining you might want to pack an eye mask.
Something to use as a pillow
Just take a normal pillow if you can get away with it. If you’re short on space, take a pillowcase and stuff it with clothes to support your head while you sleep. Alternatively, you can take an inflatable camping pillow or a nice travel pillow.
What not to bring
This section is pretty much the opposite of a Reading Festival packing list, but it should help you stay out of trouble.
Anything you can’t take home again
‘Love the farm, leave no trace’ is the motto. They’ll have recycling areas in the campsites for empty cans and food packaging, but make sure you leave absolutely nothing in the field when you go home.
Gazebos
Gazebos take up too much space in the campsites and make it harder for other people to get to their tents. You risk having yours taken off you at the gate, or having stewards ask you to remove it after you’ve gone to the effort of putting it up. They’re also a safety risk when it gets windy.
Hopefully, some of your group will be sharing a large tent with a central living area where you can socialise with some shelter. And hopefully, it’ll be sunny the whole time and you won’t need it. But, if you’re really concerned about having nowhere to chill as a group, and some of you still need a tent to sleep in, this thing might make a good compromise:
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Non-biodegradable glitter
Glitter is really bad for the environment. It’s a microplastic, just like those beads they had in shower gel until it got banned. Plant-based alternatives are available, but some of these are still harmful to the festival environment, so buy carefully, if at all.
Disposable wipes – even biodegradable ones
Even biodegradable wipes can quickly break up into microplastics. Reading Festival ask that you don’t even bring plant-based wipes as they still give off greenhouse gases when they break down. Bring a small towel or washcloth instead.
Single-use plastic
Try to avoid bringing anything packaged in or made of disposable plastic, such as glow sticks. A small amount is probably unavoidable (obviously bring your medication in its plastic packaging!) but much more is definitely avoidable.
Glass
No glass of any kind for any reason. No glass bottles. No glass mirrors. No glass anything. Don’t be the comedian who asks: “but isn’t my smartphone screen made of glass? is that allowed?”
You’ll need to transfer any alcohol in glass bottles, such as wine or spirits, into other containers before you’ll be allowed to bring it into the festival – so make your life much easier and do this at home.
Drones
Drones or UAVs are on the prohibited items list – and there’s usually a special, temporary Air Navigation Order in place which bans flying over the festival.
Laser pens
Lasers are banned. Shining them around the crowd and at the stage is stupid. Don’t bring them.