The London Coffee Festival has been postponed due to the ongoing fears surrounding the spread of Coronavirus in the UK.
The annual celebration of all things coffee was set to take place during the first week of April, but appears to have been postponed after an Instagram account leaked a message seemingly sent to participating vendors.
In a now deleted post, the Instagram account for Socratic Coffee posted what appeared to be a screenshot of a message informing people of the change of dates.
The message read: “After a thorough assessment of the current coronavirus situation in the UK and globally, and in the interest of good event management and the safety of all our stakeholders, we have taken the difficult decision to postpone the London Coffee Festival 2020 to 23-26 July.”
The festival had originally been scheduled to take place from 2-5 April, but will now happen in the last week of July. The message posted to Instagram also assured people that all bookings would be transferred to the proposed new dates, alongside the full programme of events.
2020 is the festival’s landmark tenth year and was due to be its biggest yet, welcoming 250 exhibitors and up to 35,000 attendees. The festival is also the home of the Coffee Masters championship, in which 16 of the most skilful baristas from across the globe go head to head in a tense competition.
The London Coffee Festival is not the only major event to be cancelled in recent times – the Raw Wine Fair, which was due to take place this weekend, has also been delayed because of panic around the virus.
The London Coffee Festival is yet to make any official announcement concerning the date of this year’s London Coffee Festival.
In other Coronavirus news, read how prejudices around the virus have impacted Chinatown restaurants.