Clue #249: As Glastonbury has an off year, here’s why more of the beloved culture is ditching the tools | culture

IIn any other year, this week’s guide would arrive in your inbox from Worthy Farm, home of Glastonbury Festival. But not in 2026: for the first time since the Covid pandemic, which halted the festival for two years in a row, Glasto will not be attending. the reason? It’s been booked into one of the occasional break years, giving the dairy farms on which the festival is held a chance to recover from half a decade of camping, trampling and walking. It also gives its organizers a rare opportunity to recharge their batteries and plan for the festival’s future, and its critics a year’s opportunity to declare its headliners the “worst ever” again.

For long-term Glasto-goers, it’s always bittersweet when the fallow year begins – the last being in 2018 – but this year it feels like a bullet dodged, given that the event was going to land in the middle of a truly dangerous heatwave (my face, and many others’, had turned a previously undiscovered shade of beetroot). What’s more, a fallow year is often a treat: when the festival returns the following year, it tends to be re-energised, with new stages, stronger line-ups and well-rested people running the show.

In fact, I think Glastonbury’s break was so successful, others would do well to follow suit. This may not be the case with other festivals, which, with their limited overhead costs and profit margins, require punters to frequent them every year in order to survive. But sure, other cultural institutions could use a break now and then. Could Eurovision, which is languishing in the ratings and plagued by controversy, benefit from a year off to resolve political tensions, entice boycotting countries and take a look at a voting system reform that can be easily played out? Or could the Star Wars franchise, suffering from audience apathy and fatigue due to its overcrowded fleet of films and TV shows, pause as the universe expands relentlessly? Don’t worry, LucasFilm, the audience will still be there when you return; They’ve waited decades for prequels and sequels in the past.

For some pop stars — in an age where consistent content is expected, even required — taking a year off can be liberating. It appears that Taylor Swift, after a long period of near-ubiquity, is on a brief and welcome moment of respite, at least musically (a very large wedding on the horizon is keeping her firmly in the public eye). Her only contribution in 2026 was a song for the Toy Story 5 soundtrack, which critics heralded as a return to form after the disappointment of The Life of a Showgirl, a rushed, content-heavy release that earned some of the worst reviews of Swift’s career (not to mention speculation about potential burnout). Maybe Charli xcx, who’s still on an exhausting cycle of post-Brat self-promotion (endless tours, six movie roles, new album announcement…), could use a year off, too. Adele, for example, has shown the value of regularly stepping away from the spotlight – both commercially and for personal well-being.

A fallow year would also solve the problems posed by overexposure. Take Romesh Ranganathan, a comedian who is much more talented than he is often given credit for, but who has become a cult figure due to his constant presence on prime-time television. (Reviewing Ranganathan’s latest game show, The Guardian’s Rick Samader wondered whether “the comedian’s email auto-responder is a copy-and-paste of the word ‘yes’.”) What’s the best way to combat this? Yes, a year of rest.

Television drama, once a form fully committed to annual disruption, now seems to operate largely according to its own kind of break logic – even though the long breaks between series are not due to anyone taking time off; It’s simply that production lasts much longer than it did before. There are exceptions to this new rule, however, and I wonder if The Bear, a show we once praised for its adherence to annual timeslots, may have actually gone on a hiatus at some point, given diminishing returns in its subsequent seasons (although I’m hearing positive things about the show’s fifth and final outing, which landed on Disney+ today). And goodness knows there are plenty of shows in the fast-and-loose world of reality TV that could benefit from an extended forced break, either to tighten up morals, standards, and practices or just to freshen up an old format. (Be honest, did you have any idea a series of Love Island was currently airing?)

This is all a bit fictional, of course. Very few shows, film franchises and performers can realistically book during a year of rest and renewal: fan demand; stock prices; More importantly, people’s need to earn a living dictates otherwise. Glastonbury Festival is quite anomalous in this respect: the festival is not for profit; Its founders have an entirely separate stream of livestock-based income; Many of its employees have other jobs away from the festival as well. It is a situation that cannot necessarily be replicated elsewhere.

However, in this 24/7 funnel-feeding culture, there is certainly something to be said for pausing for a period of reflection and renewal. Which is why I’ll be back with the rest of the newsletter after a short break, focusing on my other big passion: dairy farming… well, well, well – I’ll be eating crunchy cornflakes while scrolling on my phone.

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