The organisers of music festival Pukkelpop announced on Tuesday that they will be organising a smaller version of the event after it was cancelled at the end of last month due to complications with coronavirus measures.
From Thursday 19 August to Sunday 22 August, several Belgian artists who had been on the original line-up will be playing at the Pukkelpop Quarter on the Muziekodroom site in Hasselt during four "separate outdoor events, each with their own musical content."
"We went in search of alternative playing opportunities for many artists who had committed to the cancelled Pukkelpop edition," a press release from the organisation read.
Originally, the organisers had planned for a fully-fledged edition with up to 66,000 people a day, however, on 23 July, it was announced that this year’s event would be cancelled, as a result of the rules around testing to enter the festival becoming more strict, making testing all the attendees unfeasible.
"The current framework has made it impossible for us to organise Pukkelpop. The additional demands in terms of testing would require us to almost triple the testing capacity at and in the run-up to the festival," the organisers said at the time.
Now, a negative PCR test needs to be carried out within 48 hours of the entrance to an event, and a negative antigen test is only valid for 24 hours.
Aside from a valid festival ticket, festival-goers will have to bring a form of ID and a valid Covid Safe Ticket, to prove that someone is fully vaccinated for 14 days, recently tested negative or recently recovered from the virus.
Same rules
The organisers have now created a circulation plan with adapted walking routes to guide the public, however, there should still be no social distancing once inside the festival.
"Within the arrival zone, wearing a mouth mask is mandatory and you are kindly requested to keep as much distance as possible from people who do not belong to your bubble. Once you enter the terrain, your mask can be removed and the distance rules are no longer applicable," the press release read.
Several Belgian artists, including Zwangere Guy, The Opposites, Whispering Sons, Bazart and Charlotte de Witte will be playing during the scaled-down version of the festival, for which festival-goers can only buy day tickets.
Tickets will go on sale at 1:00 PM on Tuesday.
