Life Is Beautiful Festival in Las Vegas Canceled Due to Coronavirus Pandemic
By Ellise Shafer
LOS ANGELES (Variety.com) – Life Is Beautiful, the annual three-day music and arts festival in downtown Las Vegas, announced Tuesday that it will not be taking place this year.
The festival was scheduled to take place Sept. 18-20, but a performance lineup had not yet been announced and passes had not gone on sale. Last year, the diverse artist roster included Billie Eilish, Chance the Rapper, Post Malone, Vampire Weekend, Maggie Rogers and Janelle Monae.
The decision to wait until 2021 is among the first outright cancellations by a major festival that was scheduled to take place in the fall, in what could be a bellwether for other similarly timed fests currently weighing their options.
In the announcement made on their Instagram, the Life Is Beautiful team explained the reasoning behind their decision.
“We were more excited than ever to share the vision of this year’s festival with you,” the statement said. “Instead, this moment has given us the opportunity to pause and assess what is truly important. It has given us the space to reflect and to grow, to refocus on our work, and to find new ways to give back to our community beyond the three days of the festival. Our hearts are heavy, but our resilience is unstoppable.”
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Life is Beautiful because of you. Thank you for your continued love and support. We’ll dance in the streets again soon.
Festival organizer Justin Weniger said in a press release that Life Is Beautiful is working on creating new initiatives to bring together its community in these unprecedented times, in addition to ensuring that the festival can make a full comeback next year.
“From the beginning, Life Is Beautiful has been a year-round, aspirational mantra that materializes into a festival that unites visitors from around the world,” Weniger said. “For this year, that festival won’t happen but there has never been a more important time to remind us all that life is indeed beautiful. That is what we are going to do, in ways large and small.”
Another major Las Vegas festival, Electric Daisy Carnival, was recently postponed until October. Burning Man 2020, which would have taken place in Nevada from Aug. 30-Sept. 7, was canceled outright earlier this month.
