Kennel Club cancels Crufts 2021

Kennel Club has announced its decision to cancel Crufts 2021, which was due to take place from 15 to 18 July.

The event is instead set to return 10 to 13 March 2022.

Citing the Covid-19 pandemic, the event organisers said it had to take into consideration the health of its volunteers, judges, staff, sponsors and potential visitors before going ahead with this year’s competition.

Earlier this month, Kennel Club commissioned a survey which revealed that 63% of its members did not feel comfortable or were unsure about attending an inside event in the near future.

Tom Mather, Crufts’ chairman, said: “We are very disappointed that we have had to cancel Crufts for the first time since 1954, in what would have been its 130th anniversary year, and it is a decision we have not taken lightly.

“We have tried desperately hard to make this year’s show happen, including the decision we took last November to postpone the event to July. However, of course this was before we were hit by the devastating second wave of the pandemic.”

He added: “When this decision was taken, we were optimistic that the situation would be such that the show could be held. However we appreciated that there was a possibility that holding the show in the summer under certain restrictions could also, in some respects, do the show a disservice.

“We were disappointed that, even though we carried over the qualification from 2020, we would still be limited on our entry numbers and wouldn’t be able to welcome as many dogs back as we would have liked.”