{"id":662107,"date":"2026-08-29T11:56:20","date_gmt":"2026-08-29T11:56:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/662107\/"},"modified":"2026-08-29T11:56:20","modified_gmt":"2026-08-29T11:56:20","slug":"electric-picnic-dj-cancelled-over-crowd-safety-cmat-confirms-shes-playing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/662107\/","title":{"rendered":"Electric Picnic: DJ cancelled over crowd safety, CMAT confirms she\u2019s playing"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>        <img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/Valerie-F-133x133.png\" alt=\"\" \/><\/p>\n<p>\n            Valerie Flynn<\/p>\n<p>                    reports from Electric Picnic<\/p>\n<p>ELECTRIC PICNIC CANCELLED a set by legendary American house DJ Armand van Helden on Friday night over crowd safety fears.<\/p>\n<p>The 90-minute show was scheduled for the Smirnoff stage \u2013 one of the smaller venues at the 80,000-capacity festival.<\/p>\n<p>Fans had expressed surprise at this stage decision on social media and on messaging forums online before the festival, given the artist\u2019s high profile and big following from a three-decade career.<\/p>\n<p>Huge crowds had gathered before the set which was due at 10.30om on Friday night.<br \/>Some festival-goers took to social media to express frustration at the organizers. Others expressed concern at how crowded they found the area around the Smirnoff stage, which is also near a thoroughfare between other stages.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/1788004580_317_.jpeg\"  alt=\"IMG_8844\" class=\"alignnone inline-image\" \/><br \/>\n            Fans expressed frustration on TikTok.\n<\/p>\n<p>The festival has been asked for comment.<\/p>\n<p>Meanwhile, Irish star CMAT, one of the event headliners, confirmed she will play the main stage this evening as planned.<\/p>\n<p>There had been fears over whether the gig could go ahead after she was forced to cancel a Paris show in recent days after contracting gastroenteritis.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIf you are going to EP festival, see you at the main stage tonight at 9pm,\u201d CMAT said on Instagram.<\/p>\n<p>Festival goers have woken up to heavy rain this morning, but it looks like it could clear up this evening before CMAT takes the stage.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Valerie Flynn reports from Electric Picnic ELECTRIC PICNIC CANCELLED a set by legendary American house DJ Armand van&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":662108,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[3],"tags":[279634,9,10,18,11985,13,14,6,19,17,11763,11,12,15,16,5,14684,7,8],"class_list":["post-662107","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-armand-van-helden","tag-breaking-news","tag-breakingnews","tag-eire","tag-electric-picnic","tag-featured-news","tag-featurednews","tag-headlines","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-laois","tag-latest-news","tag-latestnews","tag-main-news","tag-mainnews","tag-news","tag-stradbally","tag-top-stories","tag-topstories"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/117178676037122568","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/662107","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=662107"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/662107\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/662108"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=662107"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=662107"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=662107"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}