The fallow year immediately before Glastonbury returned in 2019 was 2018.
Glastonbury deliberately schedules occasional fallow years so Worthy Farm’s land, the local environment and nearby communities can recover from the demands of the festival. After the 2017 event, organisers took 2018 as a planned break, then welcomed the festival back from 26 to 30 June 2019.
The 2018 pause followed the festival’s traditional pattern of periodic rest years, although the exact timing has sometimes shifted. Earlier scheduled fallow years included 1988, 1991, 1996, 2001 and 2006. The 2012 Olympics also affected the normal sequence by moving the planned break.
The later cancellations of 2020 and 2021 are a common source of confusion. Those were pandemic-related cancellations and are often described as enforced fallow years, rather than the ordinary planned break represented by 2018. Glastonbury therefore had a planned fallow year in 2018, returned in 2019, and then faced two consecutive cancelled editions.