Glastonbury 2021 is cancelled: what will happen to tickets?

23 January 2021, 13:00 | Updated: 17 March 2021, 18:30

The Somerset festival has had to cancel the event for a second year running - so what will happen to those who've bought tickets?

Glastonbury 2020, like music events across the globe, was cancelled last year due to the coronavirus pandemic. Now, unfortunately, hopes of staging the festival in 2021 have been dashed. The continuing COVID-19 crisis meant that planning a huge event for hundreds of thousands of people was not going to be possible, despite the vaccine rollout across the UK.

The Somerset festival was originally due to take place between 25 and 29 June 2020, with Paul McCartney, Kendrick Lamar and Taylor Swift as headliners. It was then bumped to June 2021, but with increased Coronavirus cases, this too has been cancelled.

So what will happen to the rolled over tickets? Get everything we know so far here, with the latest quotes from everyone from Michael and Emily Eavis to Macca.

Is Glastonbury 2021 cancelled?

Sadly, on 21 January, Michael and Emily Eavis announced that there would be no festival in 2021. They tweeted:

"With great regret, we must announce that this year’s Glastonbury Festival will not take place, and that this will be another enforced fallow year for us.

"In spite of our efforts to move Heaven & Earth, it has become clear that we simply will not be able to make the Festival happen this year. We are so sorry to let you all down."

What will happen to Glastonbury 2021 tickets?

Michael and Emily Eavis have reassured fans that everyone who was able to get a ticket for the 2020 festival will be able to roll their ticket through to 2022.

They posted: "As with last year, we would like to offer all those who secured a ticket in October 2019 the opportunity to roll their £50 deposit over to next year, and guarantee the chance to buy a ticket for Glastonbury 2022.

"We are very appreciative of the faith and trust placed in us by those of you with deposits, and we are very confident we can deliver something really special for us all in 2022."

What has Michael Eavis said about cancelling Glastonbury 2021?

Michael Eavis has previously talked about how devastating it would be if Glastonbury was cancelled in 2021, saying the festival could go bankrupt.

He told The Guardian in 2020: "We have to run next year, otherwise we would seriously go bankrupt … It has to happen for us, we have to carry on. 

"Otherwise it will be curtains. I don't think we could wait another year."

The 85-year-old farmer had his COVID-19 vaccine on New Year's Eve.

However, the festival organiser isn't giving up hopes on a "smaller" event this year, telling LBC: "I would like to do something in September.

"I would like to do something smaller somewhere around the anniversary date of when we started, which was the 18th of September 1970.

"I would like to consider possibly doing something around that time."

Quizzed if the event would involve getting some of the big artists who would have performed at the festival this year, the Octogenarian replied: "Yes, but I do need to get reassurance from the ethics people."

Would 2020 headliners be returning for 2022?

It's impossible to know if the festival will be able to get the exact same headliners, but Emily Eavis suggested that organisers would do their best rolling over the 2020 bill into 2021.

However, 2020 headliner Paul McCartney expressed doubts that the 2021 festival would go ahead - and he was proved right.

In December, the legendary Beatles star noted that performers and artists had worked around restrictions with live streamed performances and socially distanced gigs, but pondered whether something as large as Glastonbury could take place.

"People have started to find ways with Zoom and with socially distanced things,' he told The Sun. "But for a thing like Glastonbury where you’ve got over 100,000 people packed into a field, that’s a super-spreader you know."

READ MORE: What did Paul McCartney perform at Glastonbury 2004?

READ MORE: Who headlined the first ever Glastonbury Festival?