Glastonbury 2021 cancelled: Event to take another fallow year due to coronavirus pandemic

Glastonbury Festival’s organisers have announced that the event has been cancelled for 2021.

A statement posted to the festival’s official Twitter account explained that it had been logistically impossible to make the event happen, “in spite of our efforts to move Heaven & Earth.”

A note accompanying the full statement from father and daughter team Michael and Emily Eavis said: “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.”

Fans who secured tickets in 2019 will once again have their places rolled over to the following year, now to 2022.

“We thank you for your incredible continued support and let’s look forward to better times ahead,” the statement concluded.

The live music sector has been among the worst hit by the pandemic, with events reporting a 92.2 per cent loss in revenue in 2020.

Earlier this month, festival organisers gave evidence to a parliamentary inquiry seeking to establish what needed to be done to support the live music industry now and later this year.

They warned MPs that freelance workers were being forced to take their business elsewhere, while the festivals themselves were faced with the prospect of being wiped out completely.

The government has so far resisted requests by organisers to implement an insurance scheme that would underwrite losses of festivals that are forced to cancel last-minute.

Emily Eavis told the BBC in December that she had made a similar request last year, but received no answers.