Sales of the advance “blind bird” tickets – festivalgoers buy tickets before the line-up is announced – will continue until March 16. Prices range from HK$698 (US$90) to HK$758 for single-day tickets, to HK$1,188 for a three-day pass. Organisers say full refunds will be offered if the festival is cancelled.

Mike Hill, the CEO of Clockenflap organiser Magnetic Asia, said his team was “seeing good indications that by [November] we will have the right circumstances to allow a proper Clockenflap. What shape this will take will unfold as the year progresses, but it has to the kind of Clockenflap that we know and love.

“Given our confidence, we wanted to offer our fans a seasonal blind bird discount, while providing the reassurance that if the event is cancelled there will be refunds of the full ticket price.”

When asked about precautions in the event that the coronavirus is still an issue in November, Hill said: “We won’t do it if we can’t stage the kind of Clockenflap experience people have come to expect. But the festival has always had health and safety deeply baked into it.”

Best of the fashion music fans wore to Clockenflap

The pandemic has decimated the global festival industry, with the 2020 and 2021 editions of the world’s biggest annual music events – from Glastonbury in Britain to Coachella in the United States – being cancelled because of the outbreak.

Clockenflap has evolved into Hong Kong’s biggest annual music festival since it was founded in 2008, presenting A-list international artists such as The Chemical Brothers, Massive Attack and David Byrne from Talking Heads.

In recent years the festival has attracted a turnout of around 80,000 people over its three days.