Glastonbury, the U.K.’s biggest music festival, has officially been canceled for the second year in a row.
Festival organizers shared the news via a letter shared to their official website and social media channels that read, “With great regret, we must announce that this year’s Glastonbury Festival will not take place, and that this will be another enforced fallow year for us. 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. We are so sorry to let you all down.”
With great regret, we must announce that this year’s Glastonbury Festival will not take place, and that this will be another enforced fallow year for us. Tickets for this year will roll over to next year. Full statement below and on our website. Michael & Emily pic.twitter.com/SlNdwA2tHd
— Glastonbury Festival (@glastonbury) January 21, 2021
Variety notes, “The festival normally takes place in June, but faced with continued uncertainty about the state of the U.K.’s precarious handle on the pandemic, founder Michael Eavis and daughter Emily Eavis have pulled the plug on what would have been the belated 50th edition of the iconic music festival.”
With Glastonbury’s announcement, fans and artists are understandably wondering what this might mean for other events currently planned for the 2021 festival season, and other live events in general here in America. For the most part, large-scale events in America have taken place predominantly at outdoor venues with a very limited capacity with various COVID-19 protocols in place.
The New York Times reported earlier this month that at a virtual conference for performing arts professionals, the United States’ top infectious disease expert Dr. Anthony S. Fauci said theaters could potentially reopen at some point in the Fall of 2021. Dr. Fauci noted this could happen if 70 to 85 percent of the country received the COVID-19 vaccine by then.