Ed Sheeran to headline festival dubbed Europe’s answer to Glastonbury

By Press Association

September 20 2018, 10:01 am

Ed Sheeran will headline Europe’s answer to Glastonbury next year. (Ian West/PA)

Singer-songwriter Ed Sheeran will headline Hungary’s Sziget festival next year, an event which has been described as Europe’s answer to Glastonbury.

This year over 565,000 people attended the world’s fifth biggest music festival, which is held on the 108-hectare Obuda Island on the Danube in northern Budapest.

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I feel very strongly about this. I benefited hugely from state school music, as I’m sure many other UK musicians have. If you keep cutting the funding for arts you’re going to be damaging one of Britain’s best and most lucrative exports. Anyway, one to think about x
A post shared by Ed Sheeran (@teddysphotos) on Sep 15, 2018 at 9:19am PDT

Over 1,000 artists played the seven-day festival this year including US rapper Kendrick Lamar, cartoon group Gorillaz and Sheffield rock band Arctic Monkeys.

Sheeran is the first top act to be announced for next year’s Sziget, the name of which is the Hungarian word for island.

Sheeran, whose third studio album Divide was 2017’s biggest-selling record, recently spoke out against cuts to music education in state schools, saying he benefited from the tuition he received as a secondary school student in Suffolk.

The next Sziget festival will be held between August 7-13 2019.