The Airlie Beach Festival of Music team are saddened to announce that the 2020 festival has been cancelled due to the ongoing effects of Covid-19. Although the festival team have been looking into ways to produce a Covid safe event, with the rising cases of Coronavirus in Victoria there are now too many uncertainties for the event to go ahead.
It is clear that physical distancing regulations and restrictions on public gatherings are here for the foreseeable future and, along with growing travel restrictions, this has created a very difficult and unknown environment for planning. The 2019 event drew 3,500 people to the Whitsundays with over a quarter of these from interstate.
Airlie Beach Festival of Music, which was scheduled for November 6 – 8, would have been well into the planning stage by this point and would have booked in artists to travel to Airlie Beach from all around the country as well as from overseas. Border closures and travel restrictions, which are continually changing, make it too difficult to lock in many of the artists with any confidence.
Airlie Beach Festival of Music founder Gavin (Butto) Butlin said he was very disappointed to have to make the announcement “But we need to put the health, safety and wellbeing of our artists and the community first.
We can confirm that Airlie Beach Festival of Music will be back bigger and better than ever in 2021 – November 5 – 7.
We know there are people who travel to the Whitsundays in November annually to enjoy the music festival so we will be working with our venue partners to create some pop-up events in the spirit of the festival.” Keep up to date by following Airlie Beach Festival of Music on Facebook.
The music festival team are committed to creating innovative ways to keep live music alive through these uncertain times. In April they created an online event, Good Music Friday, which was a lineup of the events favourite artists streamed live on the festival’s facebook page and this weekend (July 25) they will be hosting Tunes in the Marina, Airlie’s first on water stage playing back to tables under the Mantra Boathouse, Port of Airlie.
All online ticket purchases for the 2020 festival will be automatically refunded. If you have purchased tickets directly you can choose to be refunded or carry your ticket forward to either 2021 or 2022. For ticket holder enquiries please email airliebeachfestivalofmusic@gmail.com
