We’ve only just made it out the other side of the first month of 2023 and already we’ve got two major music events on the horizon. The first is, naturally, the return of Glastonbury to its full glory, the second full-sized production since the pandemic forced two fallow years in 2020 and 2021. And, as of this week, Beyoncé’s long-awaited comeback tour.
Europe’s biggest outdoor music festival traditionally takes place on the last weekend of June, and, according to Bey’s published tour dates, around that time she’ll be touring Germany and Poland. Which, in the land of celebrities and their private jets, is basically round the corner. And between dates in Hamburg and Frankfurt, there appears to be… nothing at all.
And so it’s only natural that the world’s Bey fans (and there are a lot of them) have taken to Twitter to speculate that the Glasto-shaped hole in her tour schedule could be exactly that.
‘Ok, I’m putting it out there. Beyoncé is in Europe during @glastonbury and has 22/23/25th all free. MANIFEST WITH ME PLEASE. She must return!!! #beyonce,’ wrote one, with another saying, ‘Also have you noticed the tour pauses when Glastonbury is👀 maybe @Beyonce is doing glasto again👀🐝’.
If so, it would mark the second time Queen Bey has headlined the Pyramid Stage at Glastonbury (and of course, what isn’t up for speculation is the fact that she would, undoubtedly, headline), performing in 2011 shortly before making her first pregnancy announcement live on stage at the VMA’s a month later.
Her set followed her husband Jay Z’s three years earlier, when the festival was initially criticized for diverging from its rock and alternative roots. Nowadays, of course, it’s difficult to think of Glastonbury without recent headline artists like Stormzy and Cypress Hill, but back in the 00s it marked quite the shift from the Rock n’ Roll of the 60s and 70s, and the Britpop of the 90s.
While the line-up for this year’s festie is yet to be announced and the headliners are almost always saved for last, an appearance on Glastonbury’s main stage would certainly be just the ticket for Bey to announce her return to the top of the music industry with a bang.