As we announced on Apr 7, the Corona virus situation has forced us to call off our 2020 events in Motomachi Park. Sadly, this includes our “Mogu Mogu” Festival of goods and gourmet from around the world.

Although the food, beverage and catering industries are already so affected by the pandemic, our booth collaborators gave us huge understanding and warm words for next year. These people are some of the stars of our event. In these unprecedented times, we are still thinking how we could still work together this summer… In the meantime, we are giving name checks to all the booths from previous years on our WMDF Twitter account (it is in Japanese ^^).

If you see a name of a booth or a restaurant or a shop that you have used, liked, loved or maybe drunk too much at, send them a word of encouragement. It doesn’t have to be tweet, or even online. We’re sure they’d love to get old fashioned letters or postcards!

We hope WMDF’s fans can take just a little time to show their love for some of the people struggling with the economic corona hit. (Usually, at this time of year, we are sending out our MoguFes “call for participation” to potential booth owners… In this strange year, it is the customers….)

Too many booths to choose from? Shout out a “#mogufes2020” call. They will find it, and take heart!

With deep regret, we have reached the decision that Edition number 013 of WMDF, set for our usual summer dates of Aug 5-11 cannot be held as planned. There were just too many hurdles for us to overcome. You can find the full details on this News post. We are so sorry to all the overseas artists who planned for so long, and to all our fans. We wish everybody fortitude going forwards in the dark times of this epidemic.

Although Hokkaido was released from any movement and gathering restrictions, WMDF is going to try its first online planning meeting of Core members. We suppose it is a small positive progress for us from a bad situation.

We would like to thank all the people from around the world who have been in contact with us recently. With the news changing so fast, it is hard to know what to say to everybody. We just really hope for the health of the world.

For events, it is now clear that Olympics due for 2020 in Tokyo will be delayed until at least 2021. With these kind of huge changes, it is difficult to think about WMDF, but we have a little more time to make our decision together. Many locals have told us that WMDF is the thing they look forward most each year. We will do our best!

By the way, we really liked an article we found on the Washington Post, which uses graphics to illustrate the importance of social distancing. Click on the image below, and please stay safe, everybody.