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Glastonbury Festival has been cancelled for the second year running due to COVID-19.
This news was announced on their Twitter this morning: “With great regret, we must announce that this year’s Glastonbury Festival will not take place.”
“In spite of our efforts to move Heaven & Earth, it has become clear that we simply will not be able to make the Festival happen this year,” claimed Michael and Emily, the festival’s organisers.
As with last year, all those who have secured a ticket with their £50 deposit will be able to roll that over to next year, COVID-19 permitting. Last year’s 50th anniversary of the event was set to headline Taylor Swift, Sir Paul McCartney, and Kendrick Lamar, but was cancelled during the first lockdown of 2020.
Organiser Emily Eavis told the BBC last month that she hoped the festival would still go ahead this year despite the “huge uncertainty” surrounding live music.
“We’re doing everything we can on our end to plan and prepare but I think we’re still quite a long way from being able to say we’re confident 2021 will go ahead.”
Emily Eavis, Organiser
It is reported that Glastonbury Festival lost millions in 2020, with Emily’s father warning the festival “would seriously go bankrupt” if another year had to be postponed.MPs were warned at the start of the month that most of the UK’s largest music festivals will most likely be cancelled or postponed by the end of January.
Anna Wade, member of Winchester’s Boomtown Fair, claimed organisers would be in “dire straits” financially if another festival season were to be cancelled.
“You have to consider its global cultural significance – it’s the largest green-field festival in the world and it could set the tone in terms of public confidence for festivals going ahead this year.”
Paul Reed, chair of the Association of Independent Festivals
A recent AIF survey said that smaller festivals have until the end of March to decide whether to postpone or cancel their festivals for this year.
It costs “anything between £500,000 to plan a 5,000-capacity festival to £12m for a 70,000-capacity festival, which is why we’ve been asking the government to intervene on government-backed insurance and give us some sense of a timeframe on reopening,” says Paul Reed.
Whilst for smaller festivals the prospect of opening this year is still on the table, for larger events like Glastonbury, they will have to wait at least another year before re-opening.
Words by Maddy Raine.