The Concorso d’Eleganza Villa d’Este has been taking place every year for decades, always during the last weekend of May, on the shores of Lake Como. Only terrible tragedies and truly important events altered the proceedings and this year falls right into that category. It’s forced Italian authorities to forbid large gatherings of people and this year’s edition Concorso was initially postponed. The plan was to have it in October but, as we learned today, those plans no longer apply either.
According to a press release issued earlier today, the Grand Hotel Villa d’Este and BMW Group Classic have jointly come to the difficult decision to postpone the event planned for October 2020 until 28th – 30th May 2021. The press release mentions that “after careful analysis and taking into account the travel restrictions still in place worldwide, it is with a heavy heart that we have decided that current circumstances would not allow us to do the world’s oldest Concorso d’Eleganza justice in 2020.”
It was somewhat predictable in some way, to be frank. Anyone who imagines life returning to the way it was before this pandemic by the year’s end has an unrealistic view of the trouble we’re all in. Some things may never return to ‘normal’ and that’s specifically true for events that imply large gatherings of people. These might be postponed indefinitely on the longer run. According to the organizers, the theme for the 2021 Concorso d’Eleganza Villa d’Este will remain the same.
The events planned for 2020 will also be carried over to 2021 and there will be a notice issued to those wanting to enter the contest, somewhere in the beginning of 2021, so that they can sign up. Let’s all just hope that things will get better by then, so that we don’t end up in the same situation all over again next year.
