Amsterdam cancels New Year’s Eve celebrations

There will be no central festivities, nor fireworks in the districts

There will be no municipally organised New Year’s Еве celebrations this year in Amsterdam, the city website informed yesterday. Mayor Femke Halsema has decided to cancel both the main celebration on Museumplein, where the national countdown to the New Year usually happens, as well as the firework displays in the city's districts.

The reason is the raising number of coronavirus infections and hospital admissions, which caused the central government to impose a partial lockdown starting last weekend.

Safety first

Last week, in view of the deteriorating situation related to COVID-19, The government imposed stricter measures in The Netherlands aimed at limiting the occurrences of person-to-person contacts. At this point, the virus situation remains quite uncertain, and given the significant investments that New Year's Eve celebrations require, local authorities in the Dutch capital have apparently decided to cancel the shows and stop their preparations at this point already.

This means that what the municipality initially promised, instead of the consumer-fireworks displays (which were banned earlier, with the exception of category F1 fireworks), will not happen after all. There will be no party nor fireworks show organised by the city to celebrate the turn of the year. The municipality, however, is hopeful that this will be the last time that New Year’s Eve celebrations are cancelled and that from 2022 everything will go back to normal.