In November 2025, Glasgow-based music festival TRNSMT announced its 2026 lineup, boasting headliners Lewis Capaldi, Kasabian, and Richard Ashcroft, former lead singer of The Verve.
The largest music festival in Scotland has since been at the forefront of an uncomfortable conversation: its lack of female headliners. This year marks the ninth consecutive year since TRNSMT was established in 2017, in which there have been no women claiming the closing spot on the main stage.
Despite pressure from journalists, fans and artists, little has been done to remedy this glaring female-shaped hole in what is a huge part of Glasgow and Scotland’s live music scene.
In 2019, in an attempt to respond to the criticism, TRNSMT created the now infamous Queen Tut’s stage, an all-female stage. While the intentions may have been good, the approach was heavily criticised. Those against it argued it further segregated women, and though it may be a starting point, it shouldn’t have to exist in the first place. Tamara MacDonald from Glasgow’s Hen Hoose, a songwriting collective for women, told the BBC there was a danger of “normalising female artists performing in their own separate box rather than being integrated.” The stage was discontinued post 2019, and progress has remained limited.
Scottish arts and culture publication Snack reported that in 2022, out of 80 artists and bands playing across the three-day festival, only 26 of them were female. Last year, in 2025, of the 83 artists and bands, 33 of them were female, marking a disappointing increase of one more female artist in a three-year gap, and a complete stagnancy in the implementation of any female headliners. Furthermore, as it stands, TRNSMT is one of the few UK festivals that have yet to sign the Keychange pledge, an organisation who are pushing for gender equality in live music by challenging its pledgers to represent men and women equally in festival lineups.
Yet, TRNSMT is unfortunately not the only Scottish music festival where gender inequality in representation runs rampant. Snack further reports that in 2023, the Orkney Blues Festival had only one female headliner out of the six scheduled. Even more disheartening, the newly established Pavilion Festival in Ayrshire had only 10 female artists out of the 53 total performers in 2025.
This represents a wider issue across the Scottish live music scene, which raises questions and begs answers.
In 2019, Geoff Ellis, CEO of DF concerts and events (the promoters behind TRNSMT), cited too few female artists to allow for balance, telling to the BBC, “We need to get more females picking up guitars, forming bands, playing in bands.” This is perhaps a dismissive attitude that directs the accountability away from the festivals themselves. Furthermore, it is a claim that has been disproven elsewhere.
For example, Catriona Hawksworth of Hands Up for Trad, who wrote the report, Gender Equality in the Scottish Folk and Traditional Music Scene. She stated that despite an almost equal number of men and women claiming to have performed in public, more men than women were booked as headline acts for Scottish folk festivals. This counters the argument presented by Ellis that the acts just aren’t there. Instead, Hawksworth offers an alternative explanation: “If women see that they are not included in high-profile events, they may assume they will not be included in the future, and therefore apply for fewer opportunities. This leads to lower self-confidence, which leads to lower expectations.”
This brings to light the vicious cycle that perpetuates this inequality. Lack of opportunity for women results in a lack of representation, leading to a lack of encouragement, and so the circle continues.
Therefore, in some sense, Ellis’ suggestion is not the cause of the gender gap in festivals, but a symptom. Research has shown time and time again that women in music face greater barriers and levels of discrimination, in both geographically and by genre across the wider music industry. Representation in live music is only one of the indicators. As Hawksworth goes on to say, “If there are not as many women performing at festivals at a high level, fewer women are likely to aim high.” This is furthered by the social barriers women face that she identifies in her report, such as caring responsibilities and the gendered perception of genre.
In 2024, The Skinny reported on the undercurrent of misogyny that Scottish women working in music face. Glasgow-based DJ and producer Rebecca Vasmant (pictured above) spoke on her experience of casual sexism, “It’s unbelievable the amount of sound engineers that are like, ‘aw, put the backing track on’, or they’ll give cables that are for me to my male bass player or the drummer who’s a guy… There’s four women and three men in the band, and it’s always the same, they just address the guys, even though it’s my name on the paperwork.”
In another case, Edinburgh-based sound engineer Jane Datony discussed the problem of representation, supporting Hawksworth’s claim that the lack thereof can discourage women: “Representation is really powerful, and I grew into the industry with almost no role models, so it’s a sort of ingrained-against-your-will frame of mind.”
So, what is the answer? There is a growing sense of optimism through initiatives like Keychange, where, while tangible progress is still small, conversations have opened up, and awareness of inequality has increased. On a more grassroots level in Glasgow, efforts are also being made to boost encouragement and normalise participation in these currently male-dominated spaces. Girls Rock Glasgow is a community interest company that offers a 9-day ‘summer rock school’ for young girls aged between 7 and 17. There is also Hen Hoose (pictured above), a musicians’ collective of women and non-binaries that “exists to drive gender equality in the music industry by empowering women (cis and trans) and non-binary artists across Scotland.” Additionally, the UK-based initiative EMPOWER, who hold annual live events across the country to spotlight women in music, will be making its way to Glasgow for the first time this March.
All of this is to say, however, that pressure still needs to be placed upon non-participating festivals like TRNSMT to take accountability and responsibility for doing their part. If they wish to represent the vibrancy and diversity of Glasgow’s live music and festival scene and have more females, ‘picking up guitars’, they must move beyond deflection or segregation and take responsibility for putting them on the stage.