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Mar 18, 2020 By Christopher Roberts Glastonbury Festival

The iconic British music festival Glastonbury is the latest big 2020 event to be cancelled due to the COVID-19 coronavirus. Unlike SXSW and Coachella, which were due to take place this month and next, respectively, Glastonbury wasn’t happening until late June (24-28), but the festival says even if conditions have improved by the conditions aren’t right to spend the next three months building the stages and preparing the site for the more than 200,000 people that will descend on it. This is the festival’s 50th anniversary and the lineup was set to feature Kendrick Lamar, Taylor Swift, Lana Del Rey, Angel Olsen, FKA twigs, Phoebe Bridgers, Primal Scream, Thom Yorke, Paul McCartney, Jarvis Cocker’s JARV IS…, HAIM, Charli XCX, Manic Street Preachers, and many others (see the full announced lineup in the poster below).

The festival says they will return in 2021 and that those who had already put down a £50 deposit on tickets will see that rolled over to a ticket next year (or attendees can ask for a full refund). Glastonbury has taken pre-planned years off in the past, so there hasn’t been a festival every year since 1970 (back when T. Rex headlined and tickets were only £1 compared to £265 now). In fact it was on hiatus from 1972 to 1977 and took other breaks in 1980, 1988, 1991, 1996, 2001, 2006, 2012, and 2018.

Glastonbury founder Michael Eavis and his daughter Emily Eavis (the co-organizer of the festival) had this to say in a statement on the festival’s website:

“We are so sorry to announce this, but Glastonbury 2020 will have to be cancelled, and this will be an enforced fallow year for the Festival.

Clearly this was not a course of action we hoped to take for our 50th anniversary event, but following the new government measures announced this week – and in times of such unprecedented uncertainty – this is now our only viable option.

We very much hope that the situation in the UK will have improved enormously by the end of June. But even if it has, we are no longer able to spend the next three months with thousands of crew here on the farm, helping us with the enormous job of building the infrastructure and attractions needed to welcome more than 200,000 people to a temporary city in these fields.

We would like to send our sincere apologies to the 135,000 people who have already paid a deposit for a Glastonbury 2020 ticket. The balance payments on those tickets were due at the beginning of April and we wanted to make a firm decision before then.

We understand that it is not always easy to secure a Glastonbury ticket, which is why we would like to offer all those people the chance to roll their £50 deposit over to next year, and guarantee the opportunity to buy a ticket for Glastonbury 2021. Those who would prefer a refund of that £50 will be able to contact See Tickets in the coming days in order to secure that. This option will remain available until September this year. For those who are happy to roll their deposit over, that will happen automatically. Further information – including details on rolling over coach packages, official accommodation bookings and local Sunday tickets – will be added to our website in the coming days.

The cancellation of this year’s Festival will no doubt come as a terrible blow to our incredible crew and volunteers who work so hard to make this event happen. There will also inevitably be severe financial implications as a result of this cancellation – not just for us, but also the Festival’s charity partners, suppliers, traders, local landowners and our community.

We were so looking forward to welcoming you all for our 50th anniversary with a line-up full of fantastic artists and performers that we were incredibly proud to have booked. Again, we’re so sorry that this decision has been made. It was not through choice. But we look forward to welcoming you back to these fields next year and until then, we send our love and support to all of you.

Michael & Emily”

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