How to get Electric Picnic tickets with your group

Electric Picnic fills the Stradbally Hall estate in County Laois with 80,000 people every late August - Ireland's biggest festival by a distance, and culturally closer to a national holiday than a gig. The 2027 edition is confirmed for Friday 27 to Sunday 29 August, with early-entry campers arriving Thursday. Who's playing it? Nobody knows yet. Organiser Melvin Benn said outright that it was too early to reveal the 2027 lineup, and the tickets sold out anyway, on the morning of 4 September.

It's an all-camping weekend with its own folklore. There's the BYO campsite allowance of 48 cans and no glass, which is genuinely unusual at this scale, and there are the Sunday-night singalongs. And there's a country that will spend €300 a head on a bill it hasn't seen, twelve months out, because it always does. That last part is the problem this guide exists to solve.

Here's how the 2027 sale went. Three+ and Bank of Ireland customers got presales at 10:00 on Wednesday 2 September 2026, and Stradbally residents had their own the next day. Everyone else went at 10:00 on Friday 4 September, which was also when successful loyalty applicants could spend their discount codes. It was first come, first served throughout, and by late morning the official site had marked every product sold out - weekend camping, family camping, campervans and both instalment plans.

Ticketmaster capped standard tickets at four per person and loyalty tickets at two, and a loyalty code bought you no priority whatsoever. It only ever saved you money, and the queue treated you like everybody else. Prices held at 2026 levels, so weekend camping ran €245.50 to €325.50 depending on the loyalty tier. On a four-per-person cap a group of eight needs at least two buyers, but in a sale that lasts one morning, the groups that got in had far more than the minimum sitting in the queue.

If you missed out, the route back is narrow but real. Ticketmaster's fan-to-fan resale is the only lawful one, with prices capped at whatever the seller originally paid. Early entry opens at 14:00 on Thursday 26 August for pass holders. Whether official coaches and the Pink Moon pre-pitched village return for 2027 isn't published yet, so treat them as likely rather than certain.

• There is no hero buyer at the Picnic. The 2027 sale allowed four per person, two on a loyalty code, and it was gone in a morning, so everyone who can buy should be buying.
• A loyalty code cuts the price, not the queue. It goes to fans with previous Picnics on their Ticketmaster account, and it covers two tickets.
• You buy with no lineup. Agree what the weekend is worth before the sale opens, because there is nothing on the page to talk you into it.
• Resale above face value is a criminal offence for this event - budget face value or nothing, and treat any premium listing as both illegal and void.
• Tickets are digital with moving barcodes; wristbands are non-transferable once exchanged, and duplicated barcodes admit only the first scan.

Electric Picnic is a designated event under Ireland's Sale of Tickets Act 2021, which makes reselling above face value - or buying beyond the ticket limit - unlawful, with fines up to €100,000 or two years in prison. That is why the only resale that exists is Ticketmaster's own fan-to-fan exchange, where sellers list at their original price or lower and the listings turn up inside the normal purchase flow. For a buyer that's genuinely liberating. Watching the resale becomes a patience game at face value rather than an auction you can lose.

The age rules are the other surprise, and they're stricter than almost any festival in this library. Children 12 and under come free, up to two per adult and registered in advance. But 13-to-17-year-olds are refused entry entirely, even with a parent. If your group is planning around a teenager, that needs knowing before anybody buys anything.

The Picnic method is pure coverage. With a four-per-person cap you need at least one buyer for every four tickets, and in a sale that lasts a morning you want far more than the minimum sitting in the queue at 10:00, each with a working Ticketmaster login and a card that won't get declined. Anyone with a presale route should use it as well, because a presale that clears stock is stock the Friday queue never sees. Test the account logins in advance rather than at 09:58, which is when people discover the email address they used in 2019 belongs to an old job.

If your group missed out, the only lawful way in now is Ticketmaster's fan-to-fan resale, at face value or less. It's a patience game rather than an auction, so the job is one person watching, a ceiling agreed and a login that works. For 2028, the last two sales opened in September, a year ahead and before any lineup, and both were gone the same morning. The work before the next one is unglamorous, and it's the whole job. Confirm who is actually coming. Agree a ceiling per ticket while nobody's under pressure. Check that every buyer can log in. Work out who covers whom if somebody's queue collapses.

The Picnic memories that matter are the campsite breakfast, the act you stumbled into at the Salty Dog, the Sunday night when the whole field sings. What gets you there is one Friday morning in September, and a group that sorted itself out beforehand.

TicketSquad gives a Picnic squad one home for the whole cycle. Who needs tickets, and at what face-value ceiling. Whose Ticketmaster login actually works. Who has a presale route and who waits for the general sale. Under-12 registrations, coach bookings, and who covers whom if a queue drops out.

In a sale that lasts one morning, being organised isn't an advantage so much as the only strategy available. Most groups just don't get round to it until the morning itself.