Mosh pits and mask-free crowds: Download Festival pilot in pictures

Some 10,000 fans are attending the event this weekend

From mosh pits and marriages to mask-free crowds, the pictures emerging from Download Festival’s pilot event are quite the sight after months without large-scale music events.

The test event in Donington Park, which opened on Friday 18 June, is hosting 10,000 guests – compared to the main festival’s usual 111,000 – and is being headlined by Enter Shikari, Bullet For My Valentine, and Frank Carter & The Rattlesnakes.

Other acts on the lineup include Twin Atlantic, Creeper, Frank Turner & The Sleeping Souls, Skindred, Saint Agnes and Jamie Lenman.

Guests were required to take a Covid-19 test before and after the festival, and provide proof of a negative result to gain entry.

Here are the best snaps and videos to come out of the event so far…

A festivalgoer crowd surfs on the first day of Download Festival at Donington Park in Leicestershire (PA)

Fans watch Death Blooms on stage on the first day of Download Festival (PA)

The Download pilot comes after similar events were held in Liverpool in April and May, which the city’s health chief said were “undoubtedly successful”.

They form part of the government’s study to see how Covid-19 transmissions happen in crowds.

“I remember saying halfway through the pandemic, it sort of feels like we’re experiencing what the death of a band would be like, by just not being able to play,” Enter Shikari frontman Rou Reynolds told BBC Radio 1’s Newsbeat ahead of the event.

“I haven’t written any music for like 18 months and the live shows is what I think gives us this fuel as a songwriter.”

He said he thought there would be a “real emotion to the whole thing” and said the festival “feels like it’s the light at the end of the tunnel”.