Wonderfront Music & Arts Festival 2021 canceled due to COVID-19

Wonderfront Music & Arts Festival, scheduled for November 2021, won’t be returning to the San Diego waterfront this year, the second time it has been canceled due to the COVID-19 crisis.

On Thursday, Wonderlust Events and Port of San Diego announced the decision to cancel the 2021 event. In a joint statement, organizers citied the surge in new coronavirus cases and the Delta Variant.

“We pushed as long as we could working with the Wonderfront Festival team to see if case trends might look more positive or new information would give us the comfort level needed to move forward. But at the end of the day, the situation has not improved,” Port of San Diego representative Michael G. Brown said in a statement.

Brown said that they finalized the decision early — nearly three months before the festival — out of respect for attendees needing to make travel plans and because of the logistical planning required by the production crews ahead of the event.

Wonderfront’s first — and only — edition was held Nov. 22 through Nov. 24 in 2019 in downtown San Diego and drew approximately 57,000 attendees. The three-day event spanned seven stages along the city’s waterfront and featured headliners like Miguel, Migos, MGMT, Slightly Stoopid, and Ben Harper & the Innocent Criminals.

Though the names were not released to the public, performers for this fall’s event had already been booked, with festival officials noting “major headliners” were confirmed to join this year’s lineup.

Thursday’s announcement marks the second postponement of the large-scale festival, which also had to cancel its 2020 edition. Last month, another big music festival — KAABOO San Diego (previously KAABOO Del Mar) — announced it will also not return in 2021. CRSSD Festival, which spotlights house and techno music, is currently still a go for next month at Waterfront Park in downtown.

The tentative dates for the rescheduled Wonderfront Festival are Nov. 18 to 20, 2022. More details are anticipated to be released in the next few weeks, with tickets expected to go on sale this fall. Visit wonderfrontfestival.com for updates.