After the dance festival was cancelled for two consecutive years in 2020 and 2021, Tomorrowland wants to organise not two, but three weekends in Belgium next summer.
The organisation will submit an application to the municipalities of Boom and Rumst as well as to the Antwerp province and are citing "economic necessity to compensate for the cancellations" as an argument.
"We really have to do this to cushion the financial hangover," Tomorrowland spokesperson Debby Wilmsen told Het Laatste Nieuws. "Before Covid, there were no plans to start organising three weekends."
In the summers of 2020 and 2021, Tomorrowland was cancelled due to the coronavirus pandemic, which resulted in a financial hangover of over €25 million, in addition to financial worries for suppliers, freelancers and all kinds of employees.
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To get out of debt, the organisation now wants to add an extra festival weekend. "Do not forget that we have already had to miss six festival weekends, four in Belgium and another two in France with Tomorrowland Winter," Wilmsen said.
"We also owe it to our festival-goers; we get an enormous amount of questions about tickets and the waiting lists keep growing," she added.
For the tenth anniversary of Tomorrowland in 2014, the festival organised two festival weekends instead of one for the first time.
At the time, the intention was to only do that on anniversaries, every five editions, "but then we got a permit to hold two weekends every year. However, it is not the intention that these three weekends remain after next year," Wilmsen said. "Our request really is one-off."
The organisation hopes that in 2022, a festival weekend can also take place from 15 to 17 July, in addition to the already confirmed weekends of 22 to 24 July and 29 to 31 July.
