London, U.K. (July 10, 2026)—Shows by some of the biggest names in music attracted a record 24.7 million music tourists to the UK in 2025 and boosted the economy by £11.2 billion ($14.75 billion), according to new figures from UK Music.
Oasis, Beyoncé, Dua Lipa, Coldplay, Lana Del Rey and Kendrick Lamar helped attract a record number of music tourists to concerts and festivals in the UK in 2025. Those music tourists spent an all-time high of £11.2 billion in 2025 across the UK at major festivals and concerts like Glastonbury, Download, Reading, Boomtown and Wireless. The figure marks a significant 11.3% increase on the 2024 total spend of £10 billion, according to the figures published by UK Music, which is the collective voice of the UK music industry.
The long-awaited Gallagher brothers’ reunion saw the Oasis Live ’25 Tour sell out stadiums, helping boost the total number of music tourists in the UK by 4.8% from 23.5 million in 2024 to the new record of 24.7 million last year.
Of the 24.7 million total number of UK visitors, 22.6 million were music tourists from the UK—a 3.2% rise on the 2024 figure of 21.9 million visitors. A total of 2.1 million visitors were overseas music tourists—up a huge 26.8% on the 2024 total of 1.6 million. The increase was driven by the large number of overseas music fans heading to popular stadium shows in the UK, some of which were the only 2025 European dates for artists like Coldplay, Lana Del Rey and Oasis.
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A series of Oasis gigs, including five at Manchester’s Heaton Park, seven at Wembley Stadium and two at Cardiff’s Principality Stadium, saw revenues surge across the UK. The 1975, Neil Young, Olivia Rodrigo and Charli xcx were among the big names at Glastonbury in 2025 ahead of this summer’s fallow year and helped boost music tourism outside London and the North West. It was a similar story in East Anglia with Ed Sheeran’s run of shows at Ipswich Town’s stadium.
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Music tourists supported 74,000 full-time equivalent jobs in the live music sector in 2025—up 3% on the 2024 total of 71,760. This small increase reflects growth in both direct and indirect employment through the value chain supported by music tourism, particularly at stadium and arena level. However, this is not necessarily reflective of employment trends across the live music sector, and particularly at grassroots level where employment levels were hit by higher operating costs and NI contributions.
