Being among the first major music festivals to announce rescheduling due to the coronavirus pandemic, after a certain decision period, favorite summer festival’s parent company AEG shared that Coachella 2020 has been officially canceled.
“Every employee worldwide will be impacted in one form or another,” AEG CEO Dan Beckerman wrote in an employee memo on Monday, remarking on serious financial difficulties and multiple personnel cutbacks as well as issued pay cuts between 20% and 50% the company has experienced during the pandemic. “It is an agonizing decision, but sadly, a necessary one,” Beckerman noted that he and AEG hope to bring back the furloughed workers once a plan for reactivating its extensive concert business has been solidified. AEG expects that by early 2021, the company will be able to slowly start hosting and promoting reduced-capacity events.
Coachella is expected to return in some sort of capacity in April 2021, with AEG purportedly weighing the option of delaying until October 2021 in order to host a full-capacity event. AEG is currently holding off on issuing refunds for 2020 ticket holders until they solidify a trajectory for next year.