Despite being one of the highest profile casualties of this summer’s fractured festival season, organisers of Sonisphere have insisted the event will return as planned next year.
Having secured Brian May and Roger Taylor of Queen – together with Adam Lambert – as well as Kiss and Faith No More as their 2012 headliners, Sonisphere subsequently announced its cancellation in March, with a statement declaring that:
“Putting the festival together in what is proving to be a very challenging year was more difficult than we anticipated and we have spent the last few months fighting hard to keep Sonisphere in the calendar,” the statement reads. “Unfortunately circumstances have dictated that we would be unable to run the festival to a standard that both the artists and that Sonisphere’s audience would rightly expect.”
However, BBC Newsbeat reports the CEO of organisers Kilimanjaro Live, Stuart Galbraith, has told the UK Festival Conference this year was nothing more than a ‘hiccup’, and that Sonisphere will return in England, France and Italy for 2013.
“We’re working on a bill now, hopefully to announce before Christmas,” he said. “Cancelling it last year was a hiccup.”