If you’ve never worked behind a bar, there’s a visceral thrill to be had from pulling the wooden handle on a tap, especially if what comes out of it is not beer but water. Free water. It’s beautiful.Last Sunday, while at a concert in the magnificent courtyard of the Piece Hall, an 18th-century building in the English town of Halifax, I availed of a surprisingly snazzy water-dispensing system, which came with multiple taps and a stash of paper cups. When the cups ran out, shortly before the headline act came on stage, they were restocked on request. I’m not saying this was the best thing about a sultry night of live music in Yorkshire, but it was right up there.At outdoor live events in 2026 there is no facility more important and essential than the water points. They don’t have to be as fancy as the one I used at the Piece Hall. We’ve all pressed those strange rubber buttons or waved at recalcitrant motion sensors in a bid to get a steady spout of H2O into our bottles, cups and mouths. We’ve all spluttered in tandem with faltering streams and despaired when other humans snatched the last available drops of liquid survival, leaving the rest of us to parch.Today it can be expected that music festivals and all-day sporting events, as well as many, though not all, one-off outdoor gigs, will advertise the provision of free water. This is good. When I started going to concerts, what we didn’t know or care to know about the principles of hydration could have filled a reservoir. [ France restricts alcohol consumption and cancels some events as temperatures pass 40 degreesOpens in new window ]A hot day was merely a prompt to consume even more Coke and bad beer, condemning us to more frequent trips to antediluvian portable toilets that couldn’t take the strain of so many diuretics at once.Were our faces red from dehydration or sunburn? It was probably both. Did we accidentally turn ourselves into dried-out, semi-delirious husks or was this all part of the experience in our (sunken, stinging) eyes? It’s not that we were hostile to the concept of water. We didn’t behave like a World Cup crowd booing hydration breaks for having the temerity to interrupt their entertainment. We just didn’t fully appreciate the job that water did.Not to sound all Steven Bartlett about it, but these days when I go to a gig I don’t want to spend half a week recovering. But it’s not just me that’s changed. It’s the planet. More intense heatwaves in Europe, such as the one still scorching the Continent, have forced the arrival of more enlightened attitudes to hydration. Event organisers, having perhaps learned the hard way that it’s not a smart idea to create the perfect conditions for a high incidence of heatstroke, have made water less of an afterthought.The problem is that the number of water stations and the rules governing reusable bottles vary from event to event, venue to venue. Some ban opaque bottles (the kind that keep water cool). Some also specify that nothing made of hard plastic is allowed. [ Do I have to go to work during Ireland’s heatwave?Opens in new window ]Others say a 500ml “factory sealed” bottle of water is fine to bring in without clarifying whether the dreaded cap-removal practice will be in place, forcing thousands into the time-honoured tradition of concealing a bottle cap somewhere on their person where a bottle cap rightfully should not be.The already confusing array of policies can also change with the weather. On Tuesday, with temperatures reaching 34 degrees in London amid a rare red alert for heat, people going to see Harry Styles at Wembley Stadium were told that the normal rules were being relaxed and they could bring in metal or hard-plastic water bottles to fill up at the water stations. The bars also sold bottled water at half-price.But if the ban on metal and hard-plastic bottles – imposed to stop idiots turning them into projectiles – can be lifted for a heatwave, is it really necessary the rest of the time? And shouldn’t there be some sort of regulation to prevent price-gouging on bottled water where there’s a captive market?Trust issues abound. “Stay hydrated,” event organisers advise. But will they deliver on what they promise? It’s one thing to have water points; it’s another to have enough of them to cater for the size of the crowd. Primavera Sound, in Barcelona, has provided an object lesson here, most notably at the 2022 festival, which yielded a flood of complaints about unmoving queues for both the bars and the insufficient number of water fountains – a dangerous combination in the Spanish heat.Expect more backlashes along these lines in future. Big outdoor music and sports events are not cheap to attend. The very least ticket-buyers should be able to count on is a safe, unchaotic environment, free of desperation. That, in the age of global heating, means easy access to water. Lots of thirst-quenching, delicious water, on tap.