With the last remaining tickets for Electric Picnic 2020 on sale today, Body&Soul have announced that they are stepping back from their involvement with the festival. The Body&Soul area has been a long-time favourite among Picnic-goers, and has partnered with the festival over 16 years.

Body&Soul founder Avril Stanley has shared a statement about the decision to step back from the partnership:

"After 10 years as an independent festival, we have decided to step back from our presence and 16-year partnership with Electric Picnic so that we can refocus all of our attention to what the central idea behind Body&Soul is all about: creating an intimate and collaborative festival of the future; one that can embrace social change in a hugely positive way while celebrating an important and ancient Irish feast in our own unique, stand-alone style.

"We want to work towards bringing back a fresh energy and perspective to Body&Soul at the Summer Solstice Festival in Ballinlough and for our new winter festival ÉRIU (December 2020).

"We are adding a new sense of Purpose to our festival pillars of Sustainability, Wellbeing, Creativity, Culture and Family and we hope to focus all of our efforts in bringing something different to the landscape of Irish festivals into the next ten years.

"The Body&Soul Family celebrates all of the incredible and unforgettable moments in our first festival home and wishes the Electric Picnic every success in the future."

For their 2020 edition, Electric Picnic have increased their capacity to 70,000 – 15,000 more than the previous year. Over the past seven years, the capacity of the festival has more than doubled, and 2020's expansion will make it one of the biggest music festivals ever held on these shores.

The Body&Soul area, which played host to the likes of Mango X MathMan, Kitt Philippa, Æ Mak, Junior Brother and whenyoung this year, is expected to be replaced by new area for Electric Picnic 2020.