No Bluesfest Festival for 2021, as event reschedules to Easter 2022

Major Australian music festival Bluesfest have announced that due to ongoing COVID impacts, they will not proceed this October and have instead rescheduled to Easter 2022 (15th April to 18th April).

Bluesfest Festival Director Peter Noble said in a statement "it is obvious that we cannot present Bluesfest in a safe manner in October, so we have rescheduled back to our usual timing with dates over the Easter Long Weekend next year; a time we expect things to be returning to normal.

“The safety and protection of our loyal Bluesfesters, our festival staff, our performers, our volunteers, stallholders and suppliers is paramount, and I will not put anyone at risk right now.”

Bluesfest hopes to showcase much the same line-up for its return event in April of next year, three years on from when the festival last happened at Easter in 2019.

Noble says the majority of this year's proposed line-up will be on board for 2022 including headliners Midnight Oil and Paul Kelly along with Jimmy Barnes, Pete Murray, Kasey Chambers, John Butler and Xavier Rudd, with "only two or three" artists unable to join for the new dates.

Among those no longer locked in for Bluesfest 2022 are artists such as Tash Sultana, Ocean Alley, Ziggy Alberts and The Cat Empire.

Fat Freddy's Drop, Josh Teskey & Ash Grunwald, John Williamson, C.W. Stoneking and Rockwiz Live will make their return to the festival in 2022.

The 2022 festival will run across four days, with an as-yet unannounced special event proposed for the Thursday, which has usually been the festival's opening night.

The Festival’s 2021 plans for Easter were thwarted due to COVID -19 with the event forced to cancel less than 24 hours before gates opened. Byron Shire, where the festival takes place, recently went into another lockdown on 9th August after a positive case of COVID-19 was detected in the area.

Noble now asks and urges “every ticket holder to hold on to their October ticket – and roll it over to Easter. I promise you will not be disappointed. As soon as this outbreak is over and we are out of lockdown safely, then I will be announcing the incredible new names joining our lineup, and then you can make an informed decision. Rest assured, we will continue to offer refunds until after the new artist announcement.”

Bluesfest will take place over 4 days from Friday 15th April to Monday 18th April 2022 at the Byron Events Farm, Tyagarah, NSW.

All ticket options plus camping, parking and VIP are on sale now via the Bluesfest website