Yesterday, news broke that Ultra’s flagship festival in Miami had been cancelled due to the recent coronavirus outbreak. Shortly thereafter, a Your EDM editor published an opinion piece speculating on the domino effect the cancellation of such a major festival might have on the festival scene at large this year.
Early this morning, Tomorrowland Winter announced its cancellation due to the virus. Though, occurring in France, where the country’s government has already enacted strict policies to combat the spread of the virus, this wasn’t entirely out of the blue.
Unfortunately, we regret to report that more events have announced cancellations: two Road to Ultra India events in Hyderabad and Delhi, and select stages at Don’t Let Daddy Know in Amsterdam.
While there haven’t been any media reports or announcements about Road To Ultra India at this time, DLDK’s official press statement lists the festival among those already cancelled: Ultra Abu Dhabi, Ultra Miami, and Tomorrowland Winter.
Our ticket sales were good but due to the global Corona outbreak that kicked in last week, we received many messages of fans from all around the world who will not be able to visit DLDK. We sold a lot of tickets in Italy, United Kingdom, China, Sweden, Israel, France, Japan, Germany and Switzerland. We expect that 50% of all our international visitors cannot attend the show, which means that we would not be able to give the full DLDK experience as the venue will look empty. To do one mainstage with a good party atmosphere, which we always did in the past, makes more sense to do. We had to cancel six artists and luckily managed to add more artists to the mainstage area and combine three areas in one. We made sure the mainstage capacity is bigger so you don’t have to be worried that it will be too packed or unsafe.
Your EDM will continue to cover any further cancellations of events amid the coronavirus outbreak. It is important to remain calm and safe with a new illness going around: wash your hands, sanitize any commonly used public surfaces such as plane tray tables and armrests, and wear an antiviral N95 face mask if you absolutely must. (Common fabric face masks are a deterrent at best.)