What was claimed
The Red Arrows used colourless white smoke in their flypast over the 2025 Glastonbury Festival, rather than red, white and blue, so as not to “offend”.
Our verdict
There’s no evidence for this claim and the RAF has said it is not true. The use of white smoke is normal when the Red Arrows are repositioning between operating bases, as they have limited capacity for coloured dye, and this was the case when they appeared at Glastonbury this year.
There have been widespread claims on social media that the Red Arrows used “colourless” white smoke in their flypast at this year’s Glastonbury Festival to avoid causing offence.
Posts making the claim, some including a video of the flypast during Pulp’s set on 29 June, have been circulating on Facebook, with one caption saying: “Unbelievable! Colourless smoke so as not to offend with red white and blue! The anti UK crowd below do not deserve the honour of our Military pilots fly past!!!! [sic]”
But there’s no evidence to support this claim and the Royal Air Force (RAF), which operates the Red Arrows, told Full Fact that the use of white smoke during the flypast was routine.
An RAF spokesperson said: “It is not true that colourless smoke was used instead of the customary red, white and blue to avoid risking offending anyone at Glastonbury.
“The Red Arrows’ use of white smoke during the flypast was completely normal, white smoke being used on flights where the aircraft are repositioning between operating bases.
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“On this occasion, the team had completed two aerobatic displays at events earlier in the day using coloured dye and the aircraft, which only have very limited capacity for the red and blue smoke, were repositioning to Bournemouth airport, where RAF technicians replenished the jets with the coloured dye, ahead of two more displays at shows on the Sunday.”
Glastonbury festival’s press team has also reportedly said the claims were false, and we’ve seen no other evidence for them.
Other Red Arrows flypasts occurred the same weekend as Glastonbury over Louth, Barrowden, Cranwell and Glinton.
The flypast over Barrowden, in Rutland in the East Midlands, coincided with the village’s fete and their appearance was advertised in advance. Pictures and videos from the event on 28 June show the Red Arrows also used white smoke then too.
Meanwhile acrobatic displays at Cleethorpes for Armed Forces Day and Shuttleworth Festival of Flight both featured multicoloured smoke.
This article is part of our work fact checking potentially false pictures, videos and stories on Facebook. You can read more about this—and find out how to report Facebook content—here. For the purposes of that scheme, we’ve rated this claim as partly false because there’s no evidence that white smoke was used to avoid offending festival-goers at Glastonbury—the RAF has said it was because its aircraft were repositioning between bases at the time.
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