Voodoo Fest announced on social media that the event for 2022 will be cancelled.
Their website states “Voodoo Music and Arts Experience will take a pause in 2022… take care of your krewe and follow along on social media for updates”.
New Orleans’ major spring festivals – the Jazz & Heritage Festival, the French Quarter Festival and the BUKU Music + Art Project – all returned in 2022 after a two-year hiatus due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and the Essence Festival of Culture is set for an in-person comeback the first weekend in July.
The Voodoo Fest is an annual festival held in City Park featuring national and local acts. It draws a heavy crowd of young people from the city and surrounding areas and is usually held on Halloween weekend.
The last festival was in October 2019, five months before the pandemic shutdown.
Voodoo had been on a roll before the coronavirus pandemic. Total attendance for the three-day 20th anniversary in 2018, which featured Mumford & Sons, Travis Scott, Janelle Monae and the Arctic Monkeys, was reportedly 180,000. That was a 20% increase over the 2016 and 2017 totals of 150,000, and an even greater leap over previous years, The Times Picayune/The New Orleans Advocate reported.
Neither Don Kelly, who’s served as Voodoo’s director in recent years, nor a spokesperson for C3 Presents, the event’s producer, had responded to messages seeking comment on 2022?s cancellation and what it might mean for the future of the festival.
