Reading and Leeds Festival will have six ''first time headliners'' across two main stages for 2021.

Organiser Melvin Benn has opened up about the annual event - which traditionally takes place across two sites in England over the August Bank Holiday weekend with identical rotating lineups - and revealed having a year off due to the coronavirus pandemic has given his team more time to work on something special.

He told NME: ''We're also going to reproduce the main stage twice. What was the second stage is going to be elevated to an equal stage with the same presentation.

''What that really allows us to do is book six acts that are headliners... Everyone one of them is a first time headliner.''

Benn insisted all six artists topping the bill will ''very much'' be of an equal level, and he was determined to craft a new lineup rather than carrying over the same bands from the scrapped 2020 festival.

He explained: ''I was very clear and determined about that.

''The idea that the 2020 line-up would work perfectly well for 2021? No, it's not happening - not for Reading and Leeds.

''We just wiped the slate clean and started again. There will be one headliner that will repeat, but that's the only one.

''Someone asked if we should just book the same thing, but we've never done that so why would we start now? We'd be a year out of date.''

It's not yet known which of the planned 2020 headliners will be back next year, but Stormzy, Liam Gallagher and Rage Against The Machine were the three booked before the cancellation.

In 2019, the festival bill was topped by The 1975, Post Malone, Twenty One Pilots and Foo Fighters.