The Edinburgh International Festival has announced that their 2021 programme will be taking place in outdoor venues this summer, in accordance with public health measures as a result of the ongoing pandemic. The EIF, which is slated to return 7–29 August, will see live performances take place in three specially-designed pavilions erected across the Scottish capital, including Edinburgh Park and the University of Edinburgh's Old College Quad.

Each venue will be designed with social distancing in mind, with shorter performances, no intervals, spread-out seating arrangements, an extensive cleaning regimen and contactless ticketing. For those who are not yet prepared to attend in-person events, the EIF will also be providing high-quality streams of the performances free of charge. Further details of the festival's safety measures will be published in due course.

The festival will be releasing their full programme on Wednesday 2 June, with general booking taking place starting from Friday 11 June. As the world's leading performance arts festival, the Edinburgh International Festival took the difficult and unprecedented decision last year – alongside the city's other landmark summer festivals – to cancel the festival last summer due to the Covid-19 outbreak. This was the first time in the EIF's history that a festival did not take place, since its inaugural programme in 1947.

Fergus Linehan, Festival Director at Edinburgh International Festival says of this latest announcement: 'Edinburgh's summer festivals were officially cancelled almost exactly a year ago. Today, we are delighted to announce that in August 2021 the Edinburgh International Festival will return to live performance.

'While there are still uncertainties ahead, we are confident that this programme will give us the very best chance of delivering a season of live performance from 7–29 August. All our planning will be led by the advice we continue to receive from our partners in Government.

'We appreciate that these first steps back to live performances will be for audiences closer to home but are delighted to offer a parallel programme of digital work for those further afield. We are hugely grateful to the artists who have agreed to come on this journey with us, the stakeholders, donors, and sponsors who have stood by us through a tough year and our audiences who have cheered us along throughout. We look forward to sharing full details of the programme in early June.

'Welcome back to live performance, welcome back to your Festival.'

Edinburgh International Festival returns 7–29 August. For more information, visit eif.co.uk.