From the Bayeux tapestry to Glastonbury: top tips and tricks to grab the hottest tickets

Rupert JonesWhether your passion is the battle of the bands or the Battle of Hastings, Britain’s hottest cultural tickets are about to go on sale. And to be in with a shout of getting one, there are insider tips to get a good spot in the queue.General admission tickets to the Glastonbury festival next June go on sale online at 9am on Sunday, while the next tranche of tickets to view the Bayeux tapestry at the British Museum will be released to members on Tuesday 6 October before a public on-sale on 21 October.So get your fastest finger ready and follow our tips to bag a place at your hot-ticket event.Join the club Membership of an organisation or venue often includes priority booking, giving you early access to tickets. However, the cost will be beyond many people’s budgets.The next member priority booking window for the Bayeux tapestry opens on Tuesday. Photograph: David Levene/The GuardianThe next member priority booking window for the Bayeux tapestry – for slots from 1 January to 31 March 2027 – opens on Tuesday 6 October at noon. That is for members who joined up to 16 September. If you join now, you can book before the public in January for April to July 2027 dates. However, standard individual membership starts at £82.Sometimes, you don’t have to pay to get priority booking. Some theatres (such as those run by the LW Theatres group) and gig promoters (such as Live Nation) offer presale access to those who sign up for email alerts or newsletters.Assemble your squad Planning to try for Glastonbury? One person can book up to six tickets a transaction and, this year, when the sale begins, everyone who is already on the glastonbury.seetickets.com page will be assigned a place in a queue to access the booking process.The six-ticket limit means that if there are a lot of you who want to go, the best way to maximise your chances is to split into one or more groups of six. They need to all be logged on before 9am.The festival says you only get five minutes on the booking page, and there’s a lot of information to input.If, and when, one of the six people gets through, they will need the registration details, including postcodes, of everyone in their party in order to book. (Registration for this year is now closed.) Everyone should check their registration details are still correct ahead of the sale.The Glastonbury festival is scheduled for June next year. Photograph: Anthony Devlin/Hogan Media/ShutterstockSo, before things kick off, get a spreadsheet going with everyone’s details on it that everyone can access, and set up a group chat on WhatsApp, or wherever, so you can message each other instantly.To speed up the checkout process, everyone should consider having their debit or credit card details saved in their browser.For the Glastonbury general admission sale, you pay a £100 deposit a person, so everyone needs to have enough cash in their account, or a big enough credit limit on their card, to pay for all the tickets. They must have their mobile phone charged and ready to approve the payment by entering a code if necessary.Multiple devices and browsers? In theory, you can increase your chances of getting a good spot in the queue for in-demand tickets by using multiple web browsers, or several devices. However, ticket websites often warn there is a risk you will be identified as an automated bot and blocked from making a purchase.Glastonbury says people should not use multiple devices or browser tabs, as they will lose their place in the queue, or see a transaction fail.Log on early to be in with a chance of tickets. Photograph: Dominic Lipinski/PATop Glastonbury tip? Ideally, each person will be in a different location using two devices: one (maybe a laptop) on their wifi and their phone on mobile data, with wifi turned off. That will get each person two spots in the queue.Be ready If it says the tickets go on sale at 9am, don’t log on to the site at 8.58am. Go on at perhaps 8am, or even earlier. It means you are in the website, just in case it starts to buckle later when everyone else tries to log on.Some ticketing and venue websites will let you create an account and add your address and payment card details in advance. That will mean a quicker checkout if you get through.Hold your nerve So the tickets for that gig or show went on sale at 9am but a few minutes later the website says it is sold out.Don’t give up: keep refreshing the page for at least a few minutes. In that 9am scramble, some people’s purchases won’t have gone through. Perhaps there was a technical glitch, or they took too long inputting details and were “timed out”, or a bank card was rejected.In such cases, their tickets will go back on sale – maybe immediately or a little while later.Some venues such as the Royal Albert Hall in London use Twickets as their official ticket resale partner. Photograph: Graham Turner/The GuardianOnce you’re done, don’t hang around You got through, and the tickets are in your basket. Pay, then get out quick. Don’t tempt fate by hanging around: sometimes websites crash when they are overloaded, causing people to lose the tickets in their basket.Resale sites and ‘wait lists’ Did you end up missing out on tickets? There are secondary ticketing websites, such as Viagogo and StubHub, but they are not popular with everyone.However, there are more ­palatable options – notably ­Twickets, an “ethical” fan-to-fan marketplace enabling people to sell spare tickets at no more than face value (plus fees).Twickets is an app and website, and well worth checking regularly if you are hunting for ­tickets for a gig, show or sporting event.