Glastonbury 2021 cancelled due to COVID

Glastonbury Festival 2021 has been cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The announcement was made via the Glastonbury Festival website and Twitter account. It is the second year in a row that the legendary music festival has been forced to cancel due to the coronavirus outbreak.

The Tweet announcing the cancellation came with an accompanying statement:

The cancellation of Glastonbury 2021 represents yet another major blow for the live events industry. It was hoped that after last year’s cancellation that the touring market would be approaching a semblance of normality, with large scale live music events very much back on the agenda. However, the new COVID-19 variant appears to have put paid to any plans to get live music back on track this summer. It remains to be see whether or not other scheduled tours and festivals scheduled for later in the year will follow suit. Reading and Leeds Festival is currently scheduled to take place from August 27-29, and while the festival runs a couple of months later than Glastonbury, the decision to call of the Worthy Farm event will undoubtedly set alarm bells ringing for Reading and Leeds organisers.

The new COVID variant has also wreaked havoc on the pro audio trade show calendar, with the annual NAMM Show currently taking place in the virtual realm instead of its traditional home in Anaheim, California, while the ISE show, set to make its debut outing at its new home in Barcelona this June (having postponed its original February dates), is looking increasingly unlikely to go ahead given the current crisis.