FESTIVALS ARE BACK
READING, LEEDS AND LATITUDE ARE ALL GOING AHEAD ACTS SIGNED UP FOR JULY AND AUGUST BANK HOLS
SUMMER will rock after all – Reading and Leeds music festivals will go ahead in August, organisers have announced as the UK’s Covid vaccine rollout races on.
The twin events, which attract 200,000 people, including thousands of teenagers celebrating the end of exams – were canned last year along with Glastonbury, which has already ruled out this year too. Organisers Festival Republic tweeted yesterday: ‘Following the government’s recent announcement, we can’t wait to get back to the fields this summer. LET’S GO.’ Tickets are already on sale, and headliner Liam Gallagher tweeted: ‘READING n LEEDS c’mon... Can’t wait to see all your little happy faces’.
Others on the bill include Stormzy, Queens Of The Stone Age, Post Malone, Lewis Capaldi, Catfish And The Bottlemen, Disclosure and Charli XCX.
Latitude festival in Suffolk confirmed preparations were well under way for it to take place at the end of July too.
Festival Republic director Melvin Benn last night said Boris Johnson’s target of vaccinating the UK by July had made the event possible.
‘It looks like everyone would have
had their second dose by August 9,’ he said. ‘The festivals are three weeks later so I have every expectation the prime minister will deliver on his word.
‘The acts are desperate to play, the kids are desperate to come.’
Downing Street has brought forward its target of a first jab for all over-18s to the end of July, with hints that it could be as early as May. But it is thought unlikely that many under-18s will have been vaccinated by the summer.
Festival Republic did not say whether vaccine passports or testing would be in place at the two sites.
The PM has also warned the steps to lifting lockdown on June 21 could slow if data says jabs were not working.
University of Edinburgh scientist Prof Aziz Sheikh said vaccines were ‘working spectacularly well’, with one dose of either jab cutting the risk of going to hospital by up to 94 per cent.
The news will boost hopes that other big events – such as Wimbledon and the delayed Euro 2020 football tournament – will also go ahead.
The Reading and Leeds festivals – on bank holiday weekend August 27 to 29 – see acts switching between sites.
People who bought tickets for last year’s cancelled events were told they could roll them over to 2021.