Friends of the festival we hope you’re all well during this chaotic and uncertain time. Sadly, like many other great festivals across the country the Belfast City Blues Festival which was scheduled for the last weekend in June will be postponed.
The wellbeing of our friends, fans, musicians, visitors and Blues family alongside the amazing staff, volunteers, sponsors and festival team who support us every year is our number one priority.
11 years ago I started this journey with nothing but an idea and a passion for music. I wanted to promote this city and the wealth of talent we have both past and present. Little did I think back then when my friends in the business surrounded me with their support that over a decade later I would be celebrating over 22,500 visitors to the festival in 2019.
I am truly touched by the people who set aside time in their diary every single year without fail to attend the various gigs and events during the festival and I love nothing more than welcoming those who have recently discovered us and bringing them into our blues family.
I’m immensely proud of the Belfast City Blues Festival and indebted to every single person who has been part of this wonderful journey over the last 11 years. The great success of this festival is testimony to what we can achieve when we come together as a collective.
We’re currently looking at options for a potentially scaled back festival later in the year but we have to be pragmatic, it may be that we’ll not be back until 2021. But I can assure you, I’ve never let you down before and I won’t start now, we will be back, we’re not going away, we will come back bigger and better than ever and we’ll do everything we can to involve as many of our treasured blues family as we can.
In the meantime watch out for another announcement, we’ll be doing a little bit online to support you all as best we can.
Thank you from the bottom of my heart for your continued support. Please stay safe everyone, we will see you all very soon!
Seamie and the Belfast City Blues Festival team
Seamus O’Neill, Festival Director