Glastonbury Festival is one of the world’s largest, most popular and most culturally important music festivals. Though it supports all sorts of performing arts, the five-day event is best known for the many singers, bands and groups that have taken to its famous stages; many of the world’s biggest and most influential acts have played Glastonbury and see it as a career milestone.
Glastonbury 2020
Just like other festivals, Glastonbury 2020 was cancelled. It was originally meant to take place in June, but ended up getting cancelled because of the pandemic. The formal announcement of the cancellation was put out on 18 March, right when the UK was in full lockdown and no one knew whether a massive multi-day event attracting 200,000 people, scores of performers and an army of volunteers could feasibly go ahead. Now we’re into October and still riding the wave of the pandemic and even though things have started to get back to normal to some degree, there are doubts about next year’s festival.
Fallow Years
Glastonbury Festival usually has a ‘fallow year’ every five years or so. This is a year when the event isn’t held and the purpose of it is to give the site, Worthy Farm, a break to prevent excess damage from being done to it. The fallow year is also intended to give local residents and festival organisers a break. The last one was in 2018, and the one before that was in 2012. Had the pandemic not happened, 2020 would have gone ahead and the next fallow year would probably have taken place in 2023 or 2024.
Some are saying that the cancellation of this year’s event isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It’s just an unplanned fallow year, and hopefully, the festival can run for the next five years or so without any breaks taking place. It’s good that Glastonbury doesn’t strictly have to take place each and every year and that it can afford to take a year off.
The Eavises Speak
But can Glastonbury afford to go two consecutive years without being held? Organisers Michael Eavis and his daughter Emily recently gave in an interview with The Guardian about the current state of affairs and the implications this may have on the future of the festival. Michael said, that they have to run next year, or they would seriously go bankrupt. Emily added that they would end up in a ‘very serious situation if they have to cancel next year’s event. But then the industry will be hanging in the balance if they have another summer without festivals.
Glastonbury 2021
Despite major concerns, Glastonbury 2021 is pencilled in for 23-27 June. Tickets purchased for the 2020 festival are valid for next year’s one. As for the headliners and other acts lined up to perform, it hasn’t been confirmed whether the acts booked for 2020 will be playing next year’s gig. Kendrick Lamar, Paul McCartney and Taylor Swift were announced as the three headliners, with Diana Ross playing the Sunday Legends teatime slot. Some of the many other acts announced included Manic Street Prechers, Dua Lipa, AJ Tracey and Primal Scream.
Summary
While it looks like next year’s festival is going ahead, there’s no telling what things will be like in June of next year. For starters, there’s social distancing measures. Will Glastonbury, which 135,000 people attend, be allowed to have this many people on site if there are measures still in place? And what about travel restrictions and mask wearing? Things aren’t clear right now, but what is clear is that the organisers are doing everything they can to ensure next year’s event takes place and is as normal as possible.