Qualities of a best festival tent


Posted BY Ian under tent-qualities

If you want a tent just for going to festivals then you do not need the latest hi-spec mountain tent. The best festival tent is one that is easy to use, big enough for comfort and inexpensive. I'll look at these three factors in more detail below.

Before that, just a couple of requests:

  1. Several festival sites including Glastonbury's request campers to be responsible. Please do not buy such a cheap, trashy tent that you will feel happy leaving it behind at the end of one trip.
  2. Also, since the land that is used for campers is more regularly used for grazing animals, follow any rules on tent pegs. It doesn't take much effort to ensure you remove all of yours (and any others you see left lying around).

Easy to use: if you don't go camping often then you don't want to arrive in front of a large audience and look a fool. They're there for other forms of entertainment, and so are you. Go for a tent that comes in as few pieces as possible. A sewn in ground sheet is great, as are shock-corded poles. No worries about matching up the right ones. A fly sheet is better for water-proofing the tent. If you do go for a single skin tent then go for a larger one. Touching the sides of these encourages any dampness to come through.

Big enough for comfort : Tents are usually given a size rating based on the number of normal sized people that can fit in. No allowance is given for equipment and you will have to look at the stated height to see whether you will be able to sit up, or possibly even stand up, for comfort. If you think you might be spending a lot of time in the tent then go for a bigger size; just don't go so big that you hog up a large part of the camp ground unnecessarily. Remember when pitching your tent: you need space for the guy lines to go out too, not just room for the tent floor.

Inexpensive: There's no point shelling out lots of money for something you will only use infrequently. Set a budget and then find the best festival tent that you can for that price. Don't set the budget too low. Think what you are paying for the entrance ticket and what you would otherwise be paying for accommodation if you couldn't camp. If you buy a good festival tent and look after it, you should find that it lasts years.

Many pop up (or 2 second) tents meet all three requirements. If all you want is a tent for one or two festivals a year then it is probably worth looking at the alternatives here first. My best festival tent recommendations are all from this category.

If you plan on doing any car or motor bike touring afterwards then great. A 2 second tent should be good enough for that.

Only if you intend doing some camping in more serious conditions (wilderness, abroad) might you need consider getting a different style of tent. Really, that would be saying that you are buying the tent for the other purpose and then using it for a festival as well.