This year's Splore Festival has been postponed to the weekend of March 26 - 28 after initially being planned for February 26 - 28.
It will be held at the same location it was originally planned for, at the Tāpapakanga Regional Park in Auckland, and refunds will be offered to ticketholders who cannot attend the new dates.
Although Auckland's COVID-19 alert will be lowered from level 3 to level 2 before Splore was scheduled to take place, that still means public events are capped at a maximum of 100 people.
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern revealed the alert level changes on Wednesday afternoon, shortly after Splore announced the postponement.
Organisers said "the current uncertainty makes it too risky to proceed with pack-in this weekend and to hold Splore Festival on the original dates".
The Government will assess the current alert settings on Monday, February 22.
"Our apologies to anyone who is disadvantaged by this change," says Splore director John Minty.
"We want our community to be able to celebrate Splore safely while giving everybody involved as much certainty as we can. A big thanks to all our stakeholders for their ongoing support during these uncertain times.
"We welcome all our Splore ticket holders to attend on the new date."
Ticketholders will be contacted by iTICKET and given the option of attending the new dates or getting a refund.
Earlier this week, Minty told Newshub the latest COVID-19 outbreak was "a bit of a shock".
"It's something we've been preparing for for months, I've been literally looking at the health records every day for the past few months and we thought we're getting close, so it was looking good; but we were prepared for a potential outbreak to happen," he said.
"It's nervous times, it's big risks promoters are taking and we're hoping we can deliver something this summer because I know everyone is amped for it, but we need to do it safely."
Now he's hoping this outbreak is contained - but realises there's always the risk of another before the new dates in March.
"You're going to have to go through the same scenario leading up to the postponed date as well; if we come back in a month's time, we're still going to have that possibility of another outbreak in the lead up to the event."
