COACHELLA Festival Canceled For 2020

BLABBERMOUTH.NET

This year's Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival has been canceled due to ongoing health concerns related to the coronavirus pandemic. The California desert festival was one of the first major music events to be postponed in the wake of COVID-19, moving from its usual April dates to two weekends in October. But it has now been reported by Billboard that Coachella will not happen this year. The festival may return in limited capacity format in April 2021, with 60 percent capacity, or perhaps as a full-fledged Coachella experience in October 2021. Whether any of this year's planned lineup — which included headliners RAGE AGAINST THE MACHINE, Travis Scott and Frank Ocean — will return remains to be seen. In the face of the coronavirus pandemic, thousands of concerts and festivals have either been postponed or canceled, as social distancing and self-quarantining make performing live music and attending live shows all but impossible. More than 7.2 million coronavirus cases have been reported worldwide and more than 411,000 deaths so far, putting public health systems and emergency services under immense pressure. U.S. officials have repeatedly urged Americans to heed what federal, state and local officials are asking of them in order to curtail the spread and dampen the impact of the virus on the population.