Glastonbury festival kicks off as thousands stream in

Thousands of people have begun pouring into Worthy Farm in southwest England as the Glastonbury music festival kicks off, with hundreds of artists including Dua Lipa, Coldplay and Shania Twain set to enthral fans.

The festival, which sells out of tickets within minutes even before its line-up is revealed, will close on Sunday with R&B singer SZA slated to perform hits such as Kill Bill and The Weekend on the main Pyramid stage.

This year's edition will also feature Afrobeats sensation Burna Boy, rapper Little Simz, US electro-rock group LCD Soundsystem, English singer PJ Harvey and K-pop group Seventeen, in one of Glastonbury's least rock-heavy line-ups in recent years.

Sunny weather welcomed fans who arrived at Worthy Farm carrying rucksacks and camping gear.

James Trusson, 30, a sound engineer from Somerset who had queued overnight to be one of the first to arrive on Wednesday, said he had been coming to Glastonbury for 11 years and he would keep coming back because there was something going on in every field.

"It's just that magic you just don't get at any other festival," he said.

"There's not a better feeling really. It's magical."

Known affectionately as Glasto, the festival was started by dairy farmer Michael Eavis in 1970, opening the day after guitar legend Jimi Hendrix died, with artists performing to 1500 people who had bought one-pound tickets which included free milk from the farm.

More than 50 years since and with its current capacity of about 200,000 people, the site becomes a colourful and sometimes muddy little city of tents for five days almost every June.

Fans spent 355 pounds ($A674) for tickets this year, which sold out in under an hour in November.