As one of the biggest music festivals in the world, Coachella serves as a sort of barometer for the festival industry at large. At the start of the coronavirus pandemic, they were one of the first major festivals to change their 2020 plans, after which other events followed suit. Well, the latest Coachella rumor could be a predictor of bad news for music fans in the first half of 2021: It looks like Coachella will be delayed once again.
Rolling Stone reports — citing “multiple music-industry insiders” and “sources who have been in direct communication with” AEG and Goldenvoice, the companies behind Coachella — will be pushed back to October 2021. This comes after the 2020 fest was pushed back to fall 2020 and then again to April 2021.
The publication’s sources say they have been asked to prepare to move the festival to next fall in 2021. One source, a “person who works at a major talent agency that represents popular festival performers,” insists the festival is “100% moving” again, saying, “Frankly, they were supposed to announce [the change] over Labor Day. They hadn’t. And they were supposed to announce at the end of September — they hadn’t.”
They went on to note they Goldenvoice CEO and Coachella founder Paul Tollett’s office told them the new dates will either be in the first or second week of October 2021, “but they are holding the first three weeks to be safe” since not all artists have confirmed their availability for the potential dates.
Meanwhile, another source said they would “not be surprised” if Coachella ended up getting pushed back all the way to 2022 thanks to possible scheduling conflicts with artists and the lack of a coronavirus vaccine.