Glastonbury Festival might be home to some of the most lauded musicians and bands of all time when it hits Worthy Farm each summer, with its notorious Pyramid Stage playing host to stars including Olivia Rodrigo, Rod Stewart and The Libertines in 2025.

But over the years, the grassroots event has seen its fair share of controversy. In 1994, the festival saw its darkest weekend ever when Elvis Costello and Peter Gabriel took to the stage - but it resulted in the death of one event-goer. Express.co.uk delves into the darkest moments of the festival over the years.

In 1994, when The Levellers were headlining the festival, not one but two tragic incidents occurred. On the Saturday night of the festival, a man with a gun began firing indiscriminately into the crowd, managing to hit five people with bullets.

At around 10pm, urgent police support was requested after the man, who was wielding an automatic pistol, began shooting. Two women and three men were rushed to hospital with wounds, all aged between 18 and 44, but thankfully only suffered minor injuries and recovered fully later.

One witness said they saw the gunman go "mad" after an argument between two drug dealers. A day later a man was questioned over the incident "in a bid to assist with inquiries" but the gun was never recovered and police revealed nothing much more could be done from a security standpoint.

Over the years, plenty of revellers have sadly died at Glastonbury, with the most recent deaths happening in 2023. 48-year-old DJ and radio host Jason Winder died in a "medial incident", while a crew member was found unresponsive in his tent and died at the scene - with neither death treated as suspicious.

In 2014, a 67-year-old woman died and a 26-year-old man was in a life-threatening condition before dying in hospital, with the latter linked to ketamine. In 2019, a security guard for the festival - 64-year-old Martin Fallone - was found lifeless in his tent from a suspected heart attack.

The first drug-related Glastonbury death happened in 1994, the same year as the shooting, with a 23-year-old man passing away in the early hours of Sunday morning.

Conservative MP Christopher Shale was found dead in a VIP toilet at Glastonbury back in 2011. He had acted as an aide to former prime minister David Cameron and was 56 years old when he was found slumped in a cubicle backstage.

Hours before, he was reported missing by his family. An inquest found his death was from natural causes, with no drugs or alcohol in his system, and the official cause of death was given as heart disease.

A devastated David Cameron said at the time: "A big rock in my life has suddenly been rolled away."

In 2016, 27-year-old Ashton Launcherley doused himself in petrol before setting himself on fire on the Glastonbury site the week before it started in earnest. Ashton was a juggler and skateboarder who was employed teaching circus tricks to children in Bristol.

An inquest heard that he was plagued by voices telling him to take his own life before his death. He was found sitting in the lotus position in a ditch on the Glastonbury site and "deliberately set fire to himself", the coroner concluded. He was attending the festival with family when he died.

When Lisa Morris waited seven hours to see Sir Paul McCartney's Glastonbury set in 2022, she collapsed just 20 minutes into the set, with Paul pausing his performance to see if she was okay.

The Beatles legend told bystanders: "Is there something happening there? If so, let's tend to it. Come on!" Lisa was rushed to the medical tent where she was discovered to have a dangerously low body temperature of 35 degrees Celsius, and was suffering from hypothermia.

Paul told fans: "It's okay, we sorted it. We sorted it. There you go, mate! It wasn't that solo I played? All right!"

Lisa explained later: "I had a really big pasta bowl before I went in because I knew I'd be there a while and I thought I would be warm inside the crowd. However, there was a strong wind blowing through the Pyramid - I could feel it catching my flag, which I held up for seven hours."