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The Roots Picnic will not happen this summer

The Roots Picnic will not happen at the Mann Center on Aug. 1 as scheduled.

Questlove performs with The Roots during the annual Roots Picnic at the Mann Center in June 2019.
Questlove performs with The Roots during the annual Roots Picnic at the Mann Center in June 2019.Read moreTIM TAI / Staff Photographer
    by Dan DeLuca
    Published 

The 2020 Roots Picnic has been called off.

The Philadelphia hip-hop band and concert promoters Live Nation have announced that the festival scheduled for the Mann Center on Aug. 1 (after being pushed back from its original May 23 date due to coronavirus concerns) is now being rescheduled again.

When exactly it will happen, we still don’t know. The band’s announcement made on social media says the show, which was set to be headlined by Meek Mill, Summer Walker, DaBaby, Ghostface & Raekwon and The Roots themselves, among many others, is being “rescheduled for a later date.”

“We are working with the artist teams and our festival partners to confirm the new date,” the announcement reads. Presumably, that date will be in 2021. Concert calendars have been all but wiped clean of large-scale arena and amphitheater shows in the coming months, as acts that have been grounded by the pandemic look to regroup for next year.

Since the nixing of the August show is being classified as a rescheduled show rather than a cancellation, refunds will not be automatically issued. Instead, tickets for this year’s Picnic will be honored for the new date, for those who wish to hang onto them.

Ticket buyers who do want their money back can request a refund, but not until either the new date is announced or Aug. 9, 2020, “whichever comes first,” according to the announcement. More information is available at livenation.com/refund.

» READ MORE: Roots Picnic packs in a crowd for its first time at the Mann Center

Last year, the Roots Picnic moved to an expanded Mann Center campus from its former home at the Festival Pier on the Delaware River and drew a record crowd of 25,000 for a performance celebrating the 10th anniversary of The Roots landmark 2009 album Things Fall Apart.

In February, this year’s Picnic was announced as a centerpiece of a new long-term deal for Live Nation to produce pop shows at the Mann Center, which is the summer home of the Philadelphia Orchestra. The orchestra cancelled its summer schedule at the Fairmount Park venue in May due to the COVID-19 pandemic.