The Irish festival season was looking like a busy one, but the coronavirus epidemic has other plans.
Following on from yesterday's news that the Coachella festival in California was being pushed back to October, the first casualty of the Irish music festival season has been revealed.
The Vantastival festival, which was set to take place across the June Bank Holiday weekend in Beaulieu House, Drogheda, has now been postponed until September 18th - 20th.
Organisers released a statement saying that it was a "tough but measured decision" and that all tickets would be valid for the new date.
The Irish-heavy line-up included Hermitage Green, Lyra, Kormac, Bitch Falcon and more.
Whether other festivals follow suit remains to be seen. Music festivals planned for the early part of the summer include It Takes a Village in Cork (May 8th - 10th), Life Festival in Westmeath (May 22nd - 24th) and Forbidden Fruit in Dublin (May 30th and 31st).
Read the full statement from Vantastival below:
"Due to multiple challenges arising from the spread of Coronavirus, we have reluctantly taken the decision to postpone the Vantastival festival, which will now take place 18th – 20th September 2020. All expert opinion indicates the situation is likely to deteriorate over the coming weeks and the response from other jurisdictions has been to introduce widespread restrictions on mass gatherings and movement. It seems inevitable that Ireland will follow suit. We feel at this point that the most responsible course of action in order to safeguard the festival’s future and protect our crew, patrons and the general public is to take the tough but measured decision to postpone until September.
We will work with all our artists to keep as much of the line up as possible the same and fully expect to present a wonderful event in the Autumn. All tickets purchased will be valid for the new date.
Vantastival is a small family-run festival, which we have worked very hard at building up from our humble beginnings in 2010. This has been a very difficult decision for us to make, but one we had to make sooner rather than later. While postponing the event has significant cost implications, we could not continue to invest in a May event when a forced cancellation at short notice would be financially devastating for us, our traders, crew and artists and a big hit to the local economy in Louth. There are a multitude of logistical and financial elements that had to be considered in our decision, but above all we don’t want to put any of our patrons at risk, particularly as Vantastival regularly welcomes patrons ranging in age from newborns to 90 years and more.
We apologise for any inconvenience caused and hope you understand that this is due to circumstances unforeseen and beyond our control. We thank you all in advance for your support in this decision and look forward to welcoming you all to Beaulieu House & Gardens in September.”
