The popular South By Southwest festival has been canceled due to coronavirus.

The festival takes place each year in Austin, Texas and was supposed to begin in one week, taking place from March 13-22, 2020.

For those of you unfamiliar with South By Southwest, it’s “an annual conglomeration of parallel film, interactive media, and music festivals and conferences organized jointly” according to Wikipedia.

This is the first time in 34 years that the festival is being canceled. Just a couple of days back, Austin Public Health stated that “there’s no evidence that closing SXSW or any other gatherings will make the community safer.”

However, Mayor Steve Adler announced a local disaster as a precaution because of the threat of coronavirus. This would be the end for this year’s festival. As of now, no one in Austin has the virus but with South By Southwest attracting lots of international visitors, it could pose a serious threat.

Things weren’t looking good for the festival when Netflix, Mashable, Tik Tok and Intel dropped out of the festival recently.

It’s too bad that the festival had to be canceled, but it’s definitely better to be safe than sorry.

Have you attended South By Southwest? If so, what was the festival like?

Find out more from Yahoo News here.