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DreamHack Postpones All Remaining 2020 Festivals

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DreamHack Postpones All Remaining 2020 Festivals

DreamHack has announced plans to move all remaining 2020 LAN events online due to the ongoing pandemic.

The events will still go forward online, with only the LAN portion of those events really affected. Events in Rotterdam, Hyderabad, Atlanta, Madrid, and the DreamHack Winter event in Jönköpinghave are all subject to the announcement.

“The goal for all of us at DreamHack is to provide great experiences at our events, which thrive by bringing communities together for these shared and beloved festival weekends all around the globe.” DreamHack Co-CEO Marcus Lindmark explained. “We have never had to postpone events like this before — but these are extraordinary times, and the safety of our attendees and staff has never been more important than now”.

DreamHack committed to 2021 come back

It’s been a weird summer for DreamHack. Based in Sweden, DreamHack has lived through the pandemic from inside the European country with the fewest restrictions. However, with travel and venue limits very much a factor, the reality has been clear for a while. Back in March DreamHack provided multiple updates regarding the DreamHack Summer events, ultimately the event was able to take place online, and is currently ongoing as we publish this.

“This has been a very different year for everyone, but we are fully committed to bringing our festivals back in 2021.” Lindmark continued. Adding that DreamHack would “continue to follow the guidance of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the World Health Organization (WHO), the Public Health Agency of Sweden (Folkhälsomyndigheten), as well as other national health authorities for guidance on resuming our festivals”.
Lindmark ended his remarks with a commitment to DreamHack fans; ” Until then, we will continue to innovate so we can connect with our fans through great content.” He said.

The full list of affected events are:

  • DreamHack Rotterdam — originally scheduled for October 16-18, 2020
  • DreamHack Hyderabad — originally scheduled for October 31-November 1, 2020
  • DreamHack Atlanta — originally scheduled for November 13-15, 2020
  • DreamHack Winter — originally scheduled for November 27-29, 2020
  • DreamHack Madrid — originally scheduled for December 11-13, 2020

A bad year for events

2020 has been a bad year for a lot of things. In terms of esports, the lasting effect it will have on the scene will likely be the live events industry. For Sweden, the two DreamHack LAN events (Summer & Winter) are a really big deal. For starters, the town of Jönköping explodes with people from all over Sweden and the rest of the world. Even taking that smaller sample of two 4 day long events a year, you can see how much of an impact this is having globally on the scene.

Let’s hope we can welcome people in 2021 to more LAN events in the near future, and that we start to turn an important corner in this timeline.

DreamHack Postpones All Remaining 2020 Festivals
David Hollingsworth
David has written for games media outlets for the last ten years. With his first major esports role being with Esports News UK covering mostly UK League of Legends. David is also a member of the British Esports Association and is an advisor to them on World of Warcraft Esports. More recently David has worked for Esports Insider and Red Bull as an esports journalist. David later became Editor at ESTNN and now leads the current team.