Sziget Festival 2020 Cancelled

The ongoing pandemic has caused many major live music events to be postponed, even cancelled. This year’s Gathering of the Juggalos will no longer take place, and neither will Ireland’s Longitude 2020. Shambhala Music Festival and the Montreux Jazz Festival, the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival, Tomorrowland 2020, and countless others due to the coronavirus. Hungary’s Sziget Festival held out hope as the country is not among the ones hardest-hit in Europe by the pandemic, and there was a chance that the event, scheduled for August 5-11 this year, would still proceed as planned.

The Hungarian government announced recently, though, that no events hosting more than 500 people can be held in the country until at least August 15 this year. This means that Sziget, and several other events, are off.

A 28-year run

Sziget – or better said its predecessor “Diáksziget” (Student Island) was first held in 1993 on the Óbuda Island on the Danube in Budapest. In 1994, to celebrate 25 years from Woodstock, it booked several performers from the original event, like Ten Years After and Jethro Tull. In the coming years, the festival continued to grow both in size and attendance – last year, it hosted a total of 565,000 visitors.

Over the years, Sziget won several awards, including the “Best Overseas Festival” at last year’s UK Festival Awards, and the “Best Lineup” at the 2017 European Festival Awards.

An attractive lineup that will not be

For this year’s event, the organizers made their first announcement late – but it was worth the wait. The headliners of the events were Calvin Harris, Dua Lipa, Kings of Leon, Major Lazer, and The Strokes – and rumours were circulating about the event being in an advanced stage of negotiations with Eminem, whose latest diss-laced album Music to Be Murdered By was released earlier this year. Besides, it was preparing a new and improved venue for EDM fans that would’ve been “the boldest open-air electronic music venue” in the history of the event, built entirely of pallets.

Now, it seems, the people behind the event will have an extra year to book performers and come up with new ideas.

Sziget returns in 2021

“Sziget has always been special because of the atmosphere that you, our Szitizens, create and we are devastated that we won’t be able to see you on The Island of Freedom this summer”, the event’s announcement on its website reads. “Sharing an unforgettable week with you is what keeps us going throughout the year and whilst our whole team has been working very hard on preparing for the festival, your Sziget adventure will now have to wait until 2021. As hard as it is, we believe that this decision best serves the safety of all of you and everyone working at our festival.”