New Orleans Jazz And Heritage Festival Canceled Due To COVID-19 For Second Time

The New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival, or Jazz Fest, is still not happening this year after the cancellation of last year’s event due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

For the second year in a row, Jazz Fest organizers have decided to scrap the musical gathering due to the rising number of coronavirus cases in the New Orleans area, Deadline has learned.

The organizers took to Twitter to issue an official statement on the cancellation of the yearly event, saying that they will be working on resuming the heritage festival in 2022.

“As a result of the current exponential growth of new COVID cases in New Orleans and the region and the ongoing public health emergency, we must sadly announce that the 2021 edition of the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival presented by Shell, scheduled to take place October 8-17, 2021, will not occur as planned,” the organizers said in the statement.

They added that they are looking forward to having the music festival next spring, provided that the situation will be much favorable by then. The next festival is now scheduled to take place between April 29 – May 8, 2022.

Jazz Fest is normally held in the spring, but the organizers decided to move it to fall this year hoping that the vaccinations would make it possible for the event to happen, according to the New York Times.

However, due to the recent surge in cases brought by the delta variant of the virus, they ultimately decided to cancel this year’s gathering. The move was expected since Louisiana hit a record high in terms of the number of daily infections this month.

Based on the figures presented in the New York Times database, the state has seen 4,600 daily cases in the past seven days. Hospitalizations were also up, with a daily average of 2,037, while deaths have risen to an average of 30 per day.

Organizers said ticketholders will be receiving an email detailing “the ticket refund and rollover process” this week. They also added that tickets for the Oct. 13 event will be automatically refunded.

“In the meantime, we urge everyone to follow the guidelines and protocols put forth by public health officials, so that we can all soon experience together the joy that is Jazz Fest,” the organizers concluded.