Arklow Seabreeze Festival 2020 Cancelled

Arklow Seabreeze Festival scheduled to take place from Sunday 4th July to Sunday 19th July has fallen foul of the Covid-19 crisis and will not now go ahead this year as planned. The main part of the Festival was due to take place on Friday 17th July – Sunday 19th July, while the run up to the main weekend was the annual Swinging Pubs competition spread over two weeks, and Festival Princess competition respectively.

The committee of Arklow Seabreeze Festival are disappointed that for the first time in many years there will be no Festival in the seaside town of Arklow which provided a huge welcome boost to all the local businesses and economy in the town and from a tourism point of view brought in many visitors. People from abroad and outside of Arklow looked forward to their annual visit to Arklow where they visited their family and friends, visited their holiday homes, B&B’s and extended their stay to include this popular festival.

In a statement, committee Chairman Tommy Annesley said “we had been monitoring the unprecedented situation and it became clear that is it was becoming increasingly unlikely this year's Festival would proceed. This decision has been taken out of our hands and as much as we tried, unfortunately is unavoidable. We apologise to everyone who was really looking forward to our festival as much as we were, where a lot of work had been put in by the committee with a series of new events planned. We aim to return in 2021 with a greater, stronger festival than ever before. So keep the following dates free in your diary, Friday 16th – Sunday 18th July, 2021”

Whilst the committee acknowledges that the health of our community and overcoming the current pandemic is far more important as we look after the health and welfare of everyone in our community and all our families and friends, we want to take this opportunity to thank everyone for their help and support both financially and as volunteers each year to stage this free event for the people of Arklow and surrounding areas. Our front line workers, some of which are on the Festival Committee are doing a fantastic job and we cannot thank them enough for keeping us all safe and well.

Now is the time to support all our local businesses as we prepare to embark on a journey which will see people return to work over a phased basis and try to rebuild their livelihood. Please shop local as much as possible rather than lets work together to rebuild Arklow and the local economy which was showing some signs of growth. With so many people out of work a lot of challenges lie ahead, so keep well and safe.