Download Festival 2024: Traffic, parking, pick-up points and shuttle bus information

This weekend tens of thousands of rock fans will be heading to Donington Park for the 21st annual Download Festival.

This year’s event runs from Friday, June 14th until Sunday, June 16th, with festival-goers expected to begin arriving today.

An event of this scale often causes some disruption on the roads and rails - both for those heading to the event or its surrounding areas.

Check out some of our other useful guides to Download Festival 2024:

• Download Festival alcohol restrictions - what you can and can’t bring
• Download Festival Camping Rules 2024
• Set and stage times as bands drop out

Heavy traffic expected on major roads

The M1, A42, A453, A50, and A38 are all expected to see significant increases in traffic over the weekend especially when people are leaving on Sunday evening or Monday morning.

The main advice for travellers is to leave plenty of time for journeys to make time in case there are delays.

National Highways has said it will be ‘dispatching extra traffic officer patrols and are working with the event organisers to keep the roads moving as smoothly as possible, they will also be using electronic message boards on nearby motorways to advise people of delays’.

How to get to Download Festival 2024

Those people heading to the festival are advised to follow signs rather than rely on sat-navs as they should not assume the route or entry point that they may have used in previous years will be the same.

If you are planning to drive, the Download festival website has loads of information on the best routes and live updates on nearby roads.

Download Festival parking and shuttle bus

There are more parking fields this year for drivers and an increased number of gates for people to access, festival goers just need to scan the QR code on their parking passes to find out live updates on car park availability and capacity.

However, parking is now sold out, so if you haven’t already acquired your parking pass it is worth looking at alternative methods to get there.

The festival’s official partner is the well-known Big Green Coach and you can book your tickets for now on the official Big Green Coach website.

Alternatively, if you’re going by public transport or getting dropped off check the travel information for the best way to get to the site. 

The pickup and drop-off points have also changed this year and are not in the same area as the camping entrances to reduce congestion so look out for signs for directions