Early May Fluff2021 update

With the date set, with the line up announced and with covid pandemic still here we should look back to how we have got to this point.

We needed to make the decision last fall. That was Oct/ Nov 2020. We could have give up and never start working on the 2021 edition or we could look at the worldwide situation and try our best. There were countries who started vaccinating at that point. The EU countries were announcing dates they will start with vaccination. We have just experienced relatively easy going summer with covid almost non existent here in Czechia. But it was very clear that it was just an illusion and we were about to become one of the hardest hit countries very soon. Anyway we needed to try to foresee summer 2021 and that was still 10 months away.

We didn't want to go direction many many festivals did - announcing a huge international lineups, starting promotion, starting presale just like pandemic didn't exist just to cancel the festival in the spring. We have done that in with 2020 edition, but that one was prepared pre-pandemic in winter 2019/20.

So we decided to work rather slowly, work on number of different options (mostly considering the size of the festival) and work with artists who have the best chance to be able to come to Czechia in late July. And that is how we have got to this point. Nothing is still certain. But we are very close to having an idea and having that idea even confirmed from the officials.

We are still considering the festival, we believe people around EU will be widely able to travel with no restrictions this summer. We believe people who should be protected from the covid the most are getting better protection every day now. Be it via vaccination or via covid exposure. But there is other side to it too. We have that awful experience of the last summer and where fast restriction easing have got us. And we are now on some pretty poor 10% of fully vaccinated people EU-vide after 4 months.

Anyway, the way we work on the festival this year is giving us the opportunity to wait a little longer. We are not yet announcing festival capacity, we are not yet starting presale, we are not yet announcing the rules on how to get into the festival.

And we are only doing the festival if such an event is safe and if we are also able to maintain the spirit of the festival with bags and bags of personal freedom.

Michal/ Kolektiv Underdogs'