Splendour In The Grass 2020 Has Been Officially Cancelled
BREAKING
In sadly unsurprising news, Splendour in the Grass will not go ahead in 2020.
The music festival is one of a number to suspend a 2020 iteration due to the impacts of the coronavirus outbreak. Although Australia has fared a lot better during the outbreak than most, with local transmission now very close to zero, the economic and practical fall-out of the pandemic has made most music festivals an impossibility.
Most pressingly, there’s the matter of public safety. Even with transmission so low, it’s irresponsible to hold a large gathering of people over one compact weekend.
Then there’s the implications that the pandemic has had on international touring. It’s impossible to travel for anything but the most essential reasons, so a 2020 iteration of Splendour would have to be completely Aussie-led. That in turn would have a huge impact on the number of tickets that organisers could hope to sell, which would in turn need the festival to be smaller and compact.
So yeah, makes total sense that the 2020 iteration would be scrapped.
“We have been monitoring the situation closely for the past few months and while Australia is now moving into the recovery phase, there is no timeline yet around the opening of international borders,” Splendour in the Grass co-producers Jessica Ducrou and Paul Piticco said in a statement today.
“As a result, and with our audience interests front and centre, we must announce the reschedule to 2021 now. We intend to rebook as many of the 2020 artists as possible and we have started to work through that process.”
At least there’s some good news: it’s been confirmed today that the festival will go ahead next year, from Friday 23 — Sunday 25 July 2021. All 2020 tickets will be valid for Splendour 2021 edition — Moshtix will get in touch with all account holders directly, organisers say. For more information, head to Splendour’s Facebook page.
We’ll just have to wait a little bit longer. The good times will return.
Photo Credit: Mikki Gomez/Music Junkee