South by Southwest, the annual tech, music, and film meetup held in downtown Austin, Texas, was canceled a week before it was scheduled to start. It is the first time in the festival’s 34-year history that it has ever been canceled. Austin Mayor Steve Adler announced that due to a number of high-profile speakers withdrawing and increasing public health concerns, it would be best to forgo the festival altogether this year. The iconic event usually draws a crowd of half a million people to a concentrated area each year, which has only appeared as increasingly dangerous as coronavirus cases continue to rise in the United States. Apple, Amazon, Netflix, Facebook, CNN, and Mashable had all withdrawn prior to the cancellation announcement.
SXSW is the latest conference to get canceled over growing health concerns: Google’s Cloud Next conference, Mobile World conference, and Facebook’s F8 conference have also been nixed recently. Not to worry, though! The festival may be taking place later this year, according to a vague Twitter post made by SXSW’s official Twitter account.