Hiccups begone as sunburn makes its on-ground comeback after a pandemic driven hiatus

After countless back and forths for Sunburn in India, the festival has finally taken its place at a new location with new dates. For this years' celebration, the festival's 15th edition is finally seeing the light of day after taking a two-year breather due to COVID-19 and a few road bumps this year. The festival has gone virtual during this period, but nothing compares to the feeling of a vibing with a sea of physical human beings dancing to melodic bass-driven dance anthems.

Sunburn 2021 will now be hosted at Hilltop, Small Vagator, Goa, from December 27 - 29 and will look to scale down their inaugural festival due to the safety protocols and precautions of the pandemic. Percept Live, the organisers of Sunburn, paired the announcement with a second surprise — their first headliners, Dutch DJ Armin Van Buuren and psytrance duo Vini Vici.

Earlier in October, we wrote about the festival announcing its return in 2021, but without the green light from the State. Since then there has been news about the festival not returning in 2021, with the latest news from Latestly on November 24 (just a week ago) when the Goa Chief Minister Pramod Sawant said "Popular electronic dance music (EDM) Sunburn festival organised by Percept Live, one of the highlights of the state's year-end tourism itinerary, will not be held this year."

Five days ago, Percept Live’s Instagram press noted, "Percept Live would like to clarify that an initial application was made to host the Sunburn Festival at Vagator at a similar mega-scale as it used to take place earlier. Under advice from the government, it was decided to not pursue this mega festival any further due to the Covid-19 pandemic.”

Since then Sunburn has sold all of its pre-sale tickets and is at a 72% sold out marker for early bird tickets to the three-day spectacle that is themed around #LifeIsCalling — an ode to the revival of festival life post-pandemic. According to radioandmusic.com, the COO of Percept Live notes, “We are delighted to be able to finally host Sunburn on-ground with our fans after a gap of 2 long years. And we are even more thrilled to welcome back one of India’s and Sunburn’s favourite artist Armin van Buuren. The fact that he has chosen to join us for Sunburn’s comeback is a massive cause for celebration. We have a spectacular extravaganza of music, adventure and entertainment lined up for our fans. It’s finally time to ‘Live, Love and Dance Again’ and we cannot wait to welcome Sunburn fans back to Goa.”

Hopefully, this is the last of Sunburn’s hiccups this year and we’ll soon be gifted with photos and stories of one of Asia’s largest and long-standing festivals. With festivals making their on-ground comeback in Asia slowly but surely, we’re excited to see what’s next on the list early next year.