The Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival is moving from October 2021 to April 2022, two industry sources with knowledge of the situation say Variety. The country-themed Stagecoach festival, which takes place on the weekend after Coachella’s two weekends, is also expected to move.
Representatives from Goldenvoice, the event’s promoter, and AEG Presents, its parent company, declined or did not respond to Varietyrequests for comment.
The move, if officially confirmed, marks the fourth time that Coachella dates, which take place over two weekends at the Empire Polo Ground in Indio, California, have been rescheduled: first from April to October 2020, then to April 2021, and then in October, although the October dates have not been officially confirmed by the promoters and there are no dates posted on the festival’s official website for several months.
The sources said the reason for the latest postponement is continued uncertainty about the COVID-19 pandemic, although many promoters and live entertainment companies are planning at least a partial resumption of tours in late summer and fall. However, Coachella regularly sells its daily 125,000 tickets immediately, and the sheer logistics of more than 100,000 people traveling and meeting in one location creates immeasurable possibilities for disease transmission.
Although there are still seven months to go before the October dates, preparations for the festival would begin in earnest soon, and without acts on regular tours – Weeknd’s “After Hours” tour is the first major in the books, and is scheduled to start in next January – the challenges of setting up an event on the Coachella scale are much more daunting.
However, a reprogramming of Coachella does not mean that other festivals scheduled for the fall will not occur: many states have significantly less stringent COVID protocols than California, and venues in Texas and Florida have robust spring concert schedules. Several festivals across the country are advancing at full speed with plans for the fall, industry sources said Variety.
“There is a big difference between two weekends at Coachella in California and a country festival in Florida,” said a source Variety.
In its earnings conference call last month, Live Nation, the world’s largest live entertainment company, said it expects open-air and smaller shows in the United States to return in late summer. In the UK, Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s announcement that “nightclubs and big events” could reopen on June 21 prompted Live Nation to announce rescheduled dates for three major festivals, selling about 170,000 tickets in four days. However, Glastonbury, the UK’s largest festival, officially canceled its 2021 edition earlier this year.
The pandemic’s effect on the live entertainment industry was devastating. The global live events industry lost more than $ 30 billion in 2020 due to the global pandemic, including $ 9.7 billion at the box office, according to the year-end report in the live entertainment industry commercial Pollstar .