It looks like the 2020 edition of the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival—set to feature large-fonted headliners Rage Against the Machine, Travis Scott, and Frank Ocean—might be postponed.
According to Entertainment Weekly, who cited two sources, the two-weekend throwdown, planned for April 10-12 and April 17-19, is excepted to be pushed back due to concerns surrounding the spread of coronavirus. Billboard is reporting that festival organizers are attempting to move the event to October 9-11 and October 16-18. The lineup for Coachella will also remain the same. Billboard is also reporting that organizers are aiming to know if the plan to move the festival to October is doable within the next 48 hours. If they aren’t able to get all the details worked out, Coachella could be canceled.
Yashar Ali was the first to report that the festival is planning on postponing until October.
Scoop: A source familiar with the arrangements tells me that the Coachella festival will be postponed due to Coronavirus concerns and moved to the weekends of October 9 and 16.
As of now, the same lineup is confirmed to perform.
— Yashar Ali 🐘 (@yashar) March 10, 2020
Over the weekend, Riverside County officials declared a public health emergency following confirmation of its first case.
#BREAKING: Riverside County health officials announced three new cases of coronavirus in the Coachella Valley. This brings the total number of confirmed cases in the county to six. https://t.co/XxhgAUNZCJ pic.twitter.com/eQ5jSDCnjq
— KCAL News (@kcalnews) March 9, 2020
News of the wildly popular festival’s possible postponement arrives on the heels of word that SXSW organizers canceled their March 13-22 event, a move that has been widely discussed as having a potentially dire impact on the annual boost local Austin businesses usually benefit from during the festival. For info on how to help those businesses balance out the missed income, click here.
— COMPLEX