The pandemic has thwarted the Southside twice. Now the music festival is returning to Upper Swabia with 60,000 visitors – without corona restrictions. The health department advises caution.

Neuhausen ob Eck (dpa/lsw) – After a forced break of two years, the “Southside” music festival is returning to Upper Swabia. The tickets for the event from June 17th to 19th in Neuhausen ob Eck (Tuttlingen district) have been sold out for a few weeks, said a spokesman for the organizer FKP Scorpio. “Most simply kept their ticket from previous years.” In 2019, around 60,000 people attended the festival, and in the two years that followed, the “Southside” fell victim to the corona pandemic twice.

In addition to many fans, numerous artists are coming back to the festival who wanted to be there in 2020, as the spokesman for the organizer said. Only five groups from the line-up planned at the time have canceled their performances this year, including Scottish electro-pop band Chvrches. Twelve artists are new, including the British singer Tom Gregory.

The organizers do not believe that the visitors will need a period of adjustment after two years without any major festivals. Even the police are not assuming an increased workload after the forced break. “The Southside has always been a very, very peaceful festival,” said a police spokesman. “We’re assuming that’s the case again this year.” A majority of reported crimes are usually thefts from tents. “But there were always a lot of things that ended up in the lost and found office.”

According to the organizers, there should no longer be any corona restrictions at the festival. “It’s going to be a regular Southside festival,” said FKP Scorpio’s spokesman.

Because of the risk of becoming infected with Corona, the Tuttlingen district health department recommends “performing a quick test or self-test at least after the end of the event,” said a spokeswoman for the district office. In addition, Southside visitors should pay attention to frequent hand washing, which helped to avoid infectious diseases even before Corona.