The Glastonbury Festival was cancelled in 2001 because of the foot-and-mouth disease outbreak. The festival site is working farmland near Pilton, Somerset, so allowing a huge public gathering there raised concerns about spreading the disease between livestock holdings.
The cancellation was also linked to safety and policing concerns. The outbreak led to restrictions on access to rural land, and organisers decided that staging the event was impractical under the circumstances. Glastonbury therefore had a planned fallow year in 2001 before returning in 2002.
This is sometimes confused with Glastonbury’s other non-festival years. The 2006 break was a scheduled fallow year, while 2020 and 2021 were cancelled because of the COVID-19 pandemic. The 2001 interruption was unusual because it combined the disease outbreak with wider logistical and public-safety concerns.