Though rumours persist that V Festival will return to Australia, the Canadian version of festival has announced that it will not run in 2011.

Last year, the Canadian Virgin Music Festival staged five shows, in Calgary, Toronto, Burnaby, Halifax and Montreal, featuring headliners including Pearl Jam, Nine Inch Nails, Ben Harper & Relentless7, The Roots, Pixies, and Pet Shop Boys.

However, _The Globe and Mail_has reported that Virgin Festival concerts across Canada have been cancelled for 2011 as the promoters were faced with a “dearth of available talent and continued worries that consumers are cutting back”.

“We’re taking the year off,” Virgin Mobile Canada chief marketing officer Nathan Rosenberg announced, admitting that “2009, for the entire world, and in every industry was a bit different and a bit challenging. And when we got into 2010 we didn’t have luck in securing the headliners that we would have liked to have pursued.”

“In the last couple of months as we’ve been trying to put the list together,” Rosenberg explained, “[but] it just didn’t get to the stage that we thought, ‘This is an event that we want to present to people who have been to Virgin Festivals.’ If we can’t produce a festival that provides a talent lineup that we think is appropriate, we won’t go ahead with it.”

Rosenberg hopes that the festivals will return to Canada next summer, noting that “As we move into 2011 we believe that consumer confidence will return, people’s discretionary income will increase and as a result we’ll certainly feel a greater level of confidence in presenting the festival… assuming we get the right talent.”

Virgin’s US festival is still set to take place on September 25th at the Merriweather Post Pavilion in Maryland. A lineup has not yet been announced, but is apparently “coming soon.”

In October last year Michael Coppel Presents announced that that V Festival had been shelved for 2010 and while we hope the festival will return to Australia very soon the official website states that “V Festival Australia is taking a break at the moment”.

Photo of Billy Corgan at V Fest Australia by kyza