How to get notified when tickets go on sale

Published 13 October 2026

Short answer: use the organiser's own sign-up, ballot or mailing list for the sale itself. A page watcher that looks once a day can tell you that an on-sale date was announced, or that a post was edited, but it cannot get you into a queue that fills in minutes. Use it for the announcement and for any later resale or return.

Tickets sell in a rush, and the page that announces them is edited quietly. Those are two different problems, and a page watcher only helps with one.

Two jobs, two tools

Getting into the sale. This needs speed, and often a registered account or ballot entry made beforehand. The organiser's own newsletter or registration is the right tool, because it is the one that knows when the sale opens. A watcher that reads the page once a day cannot do this. On the free plan Osmanth Watch looks once a day, so a sale that opens and sells out the same morning is over before the next look.

Hearing about the announcement and what comes after. The date of the sale, a change to the price, a resale of returned tickets: these are written on a page and then change. A page watcher is good at this, and it is the job this guide is about.

A real example: one festival's ticket post

On 13 October 2026 the Glastonbury Festival's post "GLASTONBURY 2027 TICKET INFORMATION CONFIRMED", dated 8 September 2026, opened with the line: "Tickets for Glastonbury 2027 have now sold out, there will be a resale of any cancelled / returned tickets in Spring 2027." A little further down, the same post still said that tickets "will go on sale next month". It looks like a post that was edited after it was first written: the newer line sits above the original announcement, and the date shown is still 8 September 2026.

A watch on that address, set up on the day the post was written, is the kind of thing that notices an edit like that, because the page's content changes. We have not watched that change happen, so we can't tell you when the edit was made or whether a watch would have caught it on the day.

Choosing the watch

Whole-page change. Right for a single announcement post like the one above, or a home page where news items are added. It reports lines that were added or removed.
Words appear. Right when you know what the page will say, such as the words “resale” appear.
New content mentioning a word. Right for a busy page that adds new items, when you only care about those that mention your word. It matches whole words, so "resale" would not be found in an unrelated longer word.

Three traps, from our own tests.

The words are already there. On the festival's home page, the words “ticket information” appear read "“ticket information” is on the page", because a news item with that title was already on it. A watch for words that are already present has nothing to wait for. Choose words that are not on the page yet, such as "resale".

Future-tense announcements. The product ignores a phrase that is followed by "from", "on", "in", "soon" and similar words, so that "tickets on sale from Friday" doesn't count as "tickets on sale". We checked that on 13 October 2026 with made-up pages: "Tickets on sale now" was read as "tickets on sale" on the page, and "Tickets on sale from 9am on Friday" was read as not on the page. To be told that a date was announced, use a whole-page watch.

The address you paste may not be the page you expect. We pasted the festival's ticket address, /tickets/, and the product followed it to the home page, with the title "Home - Glastonbury Festivals". The same happened with Wimbledon's tickets address, which ended on a page titled "About". Look at the title in the reading before you start.

What we tested

Readings from the live product on 13 October 2026, run from the same network as the production server.

The festival's ticket address. It ended on the home page, with "26 lines (708 characters) of content". the words “tickets on sale now” appear gave "“tickets on sale now” not on the page", and the words “resale” appear gave "“resale” not on the page".
The festival's ticket post. "tell me when this page changes" gave "33 lines (4,312 characters) of content".
Wimbledon's tickets address. It ended on the "About" page, and the product said "No text content found in the watched area", so it was not set up as reliable.
A large ticket seller (Ticketmaster). The home page was refused: "This site blocks automated visits, so we would never be able to check it for you."

We have not watched any of these pages change.

If you buy from a resale site

A watcher tells you about an organiser's page. It does not tell you whether a resale offer is fair. The UK government has published guidance for businesses that resell tickets online, including what has to be shown when a ticket is offered for resale (GOV.UK). It is written for sellers, but it is a useful list of what to look for as a buyer.

Limits to plan for

Once a day. On the free plan a page is read once a day. That is enough for an announcement, and not for a sale.
Public pages only. If the page needs a login, or the sale happens in a queue behind one, we can't see it.
Pages that refuse programs. Some large ticket sellers do; Ticketmaster did in our test. We tell you at setup.

Starting one

Paste the organiser's page on the home page, say what you are waiting for, and read the title and the starting reading before you give an email address. To watch for a price rather than an announcement, see how to get an alert when a price drops. For exam dates and similar deadlines, see how to get notified when exam registration opens. The limits are written out in the terms.