After the iconic Reading and Leeds festival had to be cancelled due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic this year, many were hoping for the event to return next year. And it will! On Monday (31^st August), the first acts for the 2021 line-up were announced, with many of this year’s artists returning to the venue grounds. However, as the pandemic is still an issue, many were wondering what this would mean for their festival experience. As festival organisers now revealed, there will be some changes. For example, “everyone will be tested” for coronavirus, festival boss Melvin Benn told NME.

“COVID has given us a year off, so the innovation for next year is testing – everybody will be tested”, he said. “We don’t need a vaccination because we can work through the problem with a really good testing regime. We’ll be able to do this by next year. If there is a vaccine, there will be sufficient for the old and the vulnerable.”

“Young people can resist it. The government know that now. In March and April, they didn’t know that. Everybody was shit-scared and that’s inevitable, but as we’ve learned more, we know the strong and healthy are able to survive it.”

LIAM GALLAGHER
STORMZY
POST MALONE
DISCLOSURE
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CATFISH AND THE BOTTLEMEN

BRING ON 2021 @OfficialRandL

— JACK SAUNDERS (@jackxsaunders) August 31, 2020

He is “very confident” that next year’s festival season will go ahead as planned, and he’s positive, that even with the new guidelines and restrictions, it will be “remarkably similar to what it’s always been like.” As for the tests, Benn doesn’t think that it will affect festivalgoers that much, even though people might feel like they aren’t used to it. He’s sure that this will be “the new norm” that people will get used to.

In fact, he thinks that doing the test will become such a normal part of our lives, that young people will treat it the same way they treat downing a pint at a night out: “There will be some sort of test. By the time August 2021 comes around, it will take 10 minutes. You can see the kids outside doing it – who can neck a pint quickest, who can do a test quickest?