“It’s a very bad signal,” said Olivier Garnier, a spokesman for Hellfest, one of France’s biggest events, in a telephone interview. Hellfest hosts about 60,000 heavy metal fans each year and its 2021 iteration, scheduled for June, is already sold out.
On Monday, Hellfest sent a three-page letter to Roselyne Bachelot, France’s minister of culture, asking if the event could take place and suggesting that the festival could test participants for the virus upon arrival.
On Tuesday, Bachelot dismissed the idea that testing would be enough for festivals to take place. “It’s fantastic!”, She told a French parliamentary committee, adding that festivals were an obvious potential broadcast venue, with people singing, drinking and dancing together.
The picture is not entirely pessimistic across the continent. In Denmark, the festivals are preparing to continue, said Esben Marcher of Dansk Live, an entity that represents the festival’s organizers, in a telephone interview.
“Of course, the news from Glastonbury is a big sign for the rest of Europe,” he said, “but my feeling is that building your website is a much bigger and longer process than the others.” Glastonbury takes months to prepare its fields to host the event, said Marcher. Danish events can be organized within a few weeks.
In December, Roskilde, Denmark’s biggest festival scheduled for June, announced rapper Kendrick Lamar as the headliner. Signe Lopdrup, Roskilde’s chief executive, said in an e-mail that she was “cautiously optimistic” about the progress of the actions.