Fans prepare for music festival

Thousands of music fans will descend on the Reading and Leeds Festivals ahead of the event's official opening on Friday.

The festival will see Rage Against The Machine, The Killers and Metallica headline from August 22-24.

US punk band Anti-Flag will open the Reading site and New York band Mindless Self Indulgence will kick off Leeds.

Further performances will come from Queens Of The Stone Age and The Last Shadow Puppets.

Warm up

Between 70,000 to 80,000 fans are expected to descend on both sites over three days.

The festival campsites open at 8am on Thusday.

Throughout the weekend Bloc Party, Manic Street Preachers, The Enemy, The Raconteurs, Biffy Clyro and We Are Scientists will rock the main stage while Vampire Weekend, MGMT, Foals, The Ting Tings and Santogold will appear on the Radio 1/NME stage.

Over on the Festival Republic stage, Glasvegas, Wiley, Does It Offend You, Yeah? Ida Maria, Black Kids and Dan Le Sac vs Scroobius Pip will be whipping up fans.

The Killers are one of the main headliners at this year's event

CSS, Simian Mobile Disco, Crystal Castles and Lethal Bizzle will also take to the Dance Stage throughout the weekend.

As a warm up to the official opening, The Pigeon Detectives will be performing at the Leeds site on the BBC Introducing stage later.

Broken Records, Wintermute, The Wallbirds, Dinosaur Pile-Up and recent Dance To The Radio signings Grammatics will also be appearing.

This is the first year the BBC Introducing stage, which showcases a host of new up and coming acts, has featured at the three day event.

Weekend forecast

Over at Reading a special festival footbridge has been built across the Thames to replace the ferry service which has operated in previous years.

Festival-goers partying into the night will also be able to visit the Silent Disco later in Leeds and from 22 August in Reading.

The weekend forecast is expected to be a mixture of sun and showers at the Reading site while Leeds is expected to be rain free for almost the entire festival.

Tickets for this year's Reading And Leeds Festivals sold out in less than two hours when they went on sale earlier this year.