This weekend, all eyes turned to Barcelona as Primavera Sound Festival 2025 made history with its trailblazing all-female headline. Charli xcx, Sabrina Carpenter, and Chappell Roan dominated the main stage at the landmark event, which was streamed globally by Amazon Music. This year, it stands as the only major festival to feature a fully woman-led line-up - but why does achieving gender balance continue to be a challenge for so many festivals, and will this pioneering moment actually inspire change for other festivals worldwide?
In recent history, female artists have been at the helm of the music industry’s most iconic moments; think Beyoncé's Cowboy Carter Tour, Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour, Brat summer, and the rise of artists like Doechii. Despite this, a lack of recognition for female musicians remains a global issue, particularly when it comes to festivals.
In 2023, Sky News reported that only 18% of the headline acts at the UK’s top music festivals were female. Across over a hundred festivals that year, only 20% of headliners were fronted by women, while male-fronted performances made up 78%. In the same year, Glastonbury's headliner lineup consisted solely of male artists, sparking further criticism about gender diversity in the live music scene. The festival's co-organiser Emily Eavis told the Guardian that she was 'entirely focused' on striking a gender balanced line up, calling upon the wider industry to invest in female artists. 'We’re trying our best so the pipeline needs to be developed,' she said. 'This starts way back with the record companies, radio. I can shout as loud as I like but we need to get everyone on board.'
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Beyond the festival field, a report by Akas (Addy Kassova Audience Strategy) revealed that between 2017 and 2024, only 19% of the artists nominated and awarded at the Grammys were women. On the 2023 Brit Awards red carpet, Charli xcx spoke out against the lack of female inclusivity among nominees, stating: ‘I heard that the reason there aren’t any women nominated in the Best Artist category is that the Brits felt there weren’t enough women in the album cycle - but I was in the album cycle and had a number one, critically acclaimed album.’ The singer went on to win five awards at the 2025 Brits, including artist, song and album of the year for Brat.
Despite some positive movement in the last two years, the festival pendulum hasn't swung that much. At Coachella, Lady Gaga was the only female headliner among four acts. At Glastonbury, Olivia Rodrigo will be the only female artist in festival’s famous Pyramid Stage main slot, while Chappell Roan joins Travis Scott, Bring Me The Horizon, and Hozier as the lone female headliner at Reading and Leeds Festival. Download, Isle of Wight, and Wireless Festivals have zero female acts among their main headliners.
However, just a short flight away in sunny Barcelona, Primavera Sound 2025 sparked a dramatic shift in the way the all-woman headline is perceived. The festival’s female headline, featuring Charli xcx (accompanied by fellow pop star Troye Sivan), Sabrina Carpenter, and Chappell Roan (fondly referred to as the 'Powerpuff Girls' on TikTok), made it one of the most sought-after tickets of the year, proving the point that female artists still sell. The rest of the lineup reflected a strong commitment to gender balance too, with 42.36% female, 42.36% male, and 15.28% mixed artists taking to the stage. Performers such as CMAT, FKA Twigs, Beabadoobee, female-fronted bands Wolf Alice and Wet Leg, and former ELLE UK cover stars Haim all graced the stage at the three-day Barcelona festival.
'[Charli, Chappell and Sabrina] are three of the biggest artists of the year. To see all three of them perform in one weekend is so meaningful,' Mish Mayer, Head of Production at Amazon Music, tells ELLE UK. 'It's such a privilege to then be able to live stream it and bring it to an even wider audience.'
'I think it makes a real statement,' adds Kirdis Postelle, Amazon Music's Global Head of Content. 'The three female headliners, the show is sold out, we've got amazing viewership on our live stream, I think it sends a message, and it makes a statement to other promoters that women drive this business. We're really proud and honoured to be able to be part of this moment.'
Beyond the statement, Mayer confesses that the creative scale of this year's headliners is what impresses the most. 'The Britneys and Christinas really paved the way for [female pop artists], but I think where we're seeing change is the 'world-building' aspect. We're in Charlie's world, we're in Sabrina's world. They have so much more ownership about what that world is, whereas before female pop artists had to fit into the world. [They are] owning the narrative, and owning how it is presented to the fans.'
When it comes to future festivals, it remains uncertain whether achieving gender balance will continue to be a challenge. However, Primavera Sound's Head of Press, Marta Pallarès Olivares, assures ELLE UK that this has been a priority since its first gender-balanced line-up in 2019. 'I became official spokesperson in 2019, and even then we were thinking, how are we going to top the gender balance lineup? For us, the challenge is to just continue delivering the best lineups out there. Every year we try to do something new.'
The 2025 edition marked the 23rd year of Primavera Sound, first held in 2001. This year, the sold-out festival welcomed approximately 290,000 attendees from 136 countries, with tickets selling out over five months in advance. Primavera Sound 2026 will take place 4th-6th June 2026 in the Parc del Fòrum, and while the line-up is yet to be announced, we feel optimistic that the inclusive space will continue be one step ahead.
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Katie Withington (she/her) is the Beauty Writer, at ELLE UK and Harper’s Bazaar. Working alongside the ELLE UK Beauty Team, she covers all things beauty for both print and digital, from finding backstage make-up trends at London Fashion Week and investigating buzzy skincare ingredients, to unzipping the beauty bags of Hailey Bieber and Margot Robbie. Prior to joining ELLE UK in 2022, Katie studied (BA) Fashion Journalism at London College of Fashion and has previously contributed to Red, Good Housekeeping and Prima.
