Reading Festival

Reading Festival is a famous music festival. The Reading and Leeds Festivals are a pair of annual music festivals that take place in Reading and Leeds in the United Kingdom and are run by Festival Republic. The events take place simultaneously on the Friday, Saturday and Sunday of the August bank holiday weekend, sharing the same bill save one or two exceptions. Between 1998 and 2007 the dual festivals were known officially as the "Carling Weekend", until parting ways with their sponsor Carling in November 2007.

The Reading Festival, the world's oldest popular music festival still in existence, has had various musical phases, as detailed below. In the twin-site era, rock, alternative, indie, punk and metal have tended to dominate. The festival typically has the following stages:

* Main stage – major rock, indie and alternative acts
* NME/Radio 1 stage – less well-known acts, building up to an alternative headline act
* Festival Republic stage (formerly known as the Carling stage) – acts with less popular appeal and breakthrough acts
* Radio 1 Lock Up Stage – underground punk and hardcore acts. Due to demand, from 2006 this stage took up two days rather than previous years where it was only one day.
* Dance tent – dance music acts, on the day that the above stage does not run
* Alternative tent – comedy and cabaret acts plus DJs.
* BBC Introducing Stage – Typically unsigned/not well known acts. (Formerly known as the Topman Unsigned Stage at the Leeds site).

The festivals are run by Festival Republic, which was divested from Mean Fiddler Music Group. For promotional purposes during 1998-2007 they were known as the Carling Weekend: Reading and the Carling Weekend: Leeds. Unsurprisingly, these titles were seldom used when not required, although NME did so as part of its involvement. In November 2007, the organisers welcomed "Reading Festival reclaiming its prestigious name" when the sponsored title was abolished after 9 years of sponsorship

In 2007, the capacity of the Reading site was 80,000 and the Leeds site was 70,000. This was an increase of several thousand on previous years. The Reading festival is held at Little John's Farm on Richfield Avenue in central Reading, near the Caversham Bridge. The Leeds event is held in Bramham Park, the grounds of a historic house. Campsites are available at both sites and weekend tickets include free camping. Day tickets are also sold.

Reading stands at the confluence of the River Thames and River Kennet, midway between London and Swindon off the M4 motorway. It is one of the contenders for the title of the largest town in England. For ceremonial purposes it is in the county of Berkshire and has served as the county town since 1867.

Reading was an important national centre in the medieval period, as the site of an important monastery with strong royal connections, but suffered economic damage during the 17th century from which it took a long time to recover. Royal armies did allot of massacres in the 17th Cenruty. Today it is again an important commercial centre, with strong links to information technology and insurance. It is also a university town, with two universities and a large student population.