Event planners are a special type of person — they deal with an almost infinite number of variables that can wreak havoc. The decisions they make can impact hundreds — if not thousands — of people, the financial health of an organization as well as the livelihoods of vendors involved with their event. Knowing how to cancel an event with grace can help smooth bad feelings. Jump to the event cancellation email.
Having to cancel an upcoming event can be disappointing for everyone involved. However, providing clear communication about the cancellation in advance is crucial for maintaining positive relationships with guests, vendors, sponsors, and your own team.
Follow these six steps when drafting an event cancellation letter to ensure your announcement is professional, considerate and provides important details about next steps
1. Use a Formal Business Letter Format
A structured letter format gives your communication a polished, professional look. It also allows you to include all key details guests need to know regarding the cancellation.
Your letter should include:
- Sender’s address and contact information in the header
- Formal greeting (Dear…)
- 1-2 sentence introduction stating the purpose of the letter
- Full body content covering key details
- Formal closing (Sincerely,…)
- Your signature and name
2. Identify the Specific Event Details
Early in the letter, provide specific information about the event for clarity, including
- Name of the event
- Original date(s) and time(s)
- Location and venue
For example:
“It is with regret that I inform you of the cancellation of our Fall Fundraising Gala scheduled for Saturday, November 5th, 2022 at the Four Seasons Hotel.”
This avoids confusion and makes it clear which event you are referring to.
3. Thank Guests for Their Understanding
Before announcing the cancellation itself, open with a warm statement of appreciation for guests’ flexibility and understanding.
For example: “Thank you in advance for your patience and grace as we navigate this difficult situation.”
This empathetic lead-in helps soften the disappointing news and maintain goodwill.
4. Explain Logistics of Rescheduling or Refunds
If you plan to reschedule the cancelled event, provide key details like:
- The new proposed date(s) and time(s)
- Location confirmation
- Instructions for RSVPing to the new event
If refunds will be issued for ticketed events, explain how and when guests can expect them. Outline how you will follow up with further information.
5. Share Reason for Cancellation
Briefly explaining why the event must be cancelled reduces frustration and confusion for guests. However, keep the discussion high-level and avoid oversharing internal issues.
Some common reasons include:
- Public health/safety concerns
- Logistical challenges with the venue or vendors
- Conflict with another event
- Insufficient registration numbers
You may also express your own disappointment at having to cancel but keep the tone positive.
6. Offer Appreciation and Provide Contact Details
Close your letter by thanking guests again for their patience and understanding.
Share contact information for who they can reach out to with any questions or concerns. Let them know you value their continued support.
Proofread your cancellation letter for any errors, sign it, and send it out to guests as early as possible. Following these steps helps ensure your event cancellation communications are polite, clear and professional.
Additional Tips for Writing Sensitive Cancellation Letters:
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Send cancellation notices via multiple channels like email, social media, phone calls, and mail. This ensures all guest groups are notified.
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For especially large or expensive events, consider contacting VIP guests personally to smooth over disappointment.
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Express genuine empathy and disappointment at having to cancel but maintain an overall positive, future-focused tone.
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If postponing to a specific future date, indicate that you plan to honor all existing registrations and reservations for simplicity.
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Offer an incentive like a discounted ticket price or bonus item to encourage guests to attend the rescheduled event.
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For charity events, indicate that you will carry over donations already received to the future date unless otherwise requested.
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Allow extra time for guests to adjust travel plans for rescheduled events and calmly address individual concerns.
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For cancellations due to low registration, avoid language that could embarrass guests for not attending or place blame.
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If issuing refunds, include easy instructions for how to process these via the original payment method to reduce confusion.
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Apologize to key stakeholders like major sponsors, vendors, and your own event team for disruption and lost effort.
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If contracts with vendors/partners were involved, address the legal and financial impacts separately from the general guest announcement.
With thoughtful communication and attention to logistics, your guests, partners and event team will feel well-informed and fairly treated after an event cancellation. Handled smoothly, it can even strengthen loyalty and understanding of your brand.
Steps to Gracefully Cancel an Event
1. Enlist help as quickly as possibleIdentify helpers to help you communicate, generate ideas and respond to questions. Knowing what to say when you have to cancel an event is hard; working as a team will improve the result. When discussing how to communicate and serve those who are affiliated with the event, consider how you would react to this news and how you would want to be treated (offered a refund, given a spot at a future event, etc.) if you were a vendor, ticket holder or sponsor.
2. Identify constituentsMake a list of each category of people involved with your event. This may include staff, event chairs, attendees, members, potential attendees, VIPs, local dignitaries, volunteers, sponsors, vendors, exhibitors, local media, board members, speakers and others. Communicating to all parties involved as quickly as possible is key. Some may be able to cancel their transportation or lodging arrangements without penalty if you can let them know with enough time. 24 hours is considered a minimum amount of time to notify guests about a cancellation. Vendors or exhibitors who are traveling and/or preparing food should be given first notice if possible to minimize their financial exposure.
3. Edit your event calendar and event listingLogin to your online event calendar or event registration system to immediately close online sales and add a message as to the reasoning. You can update this information later with the statement from step 6 below. If you are postponing, some membership management software such as MembershipWorks allow you to move your event and all of its registrants by changing the event date.
It’s a good idea to prepare a message to be sent to registrants before you change the date or cancel the event to avoid a rush of calls or emails with questions. You can use the Email feature within your event to send such a message to all registrants.
4. Specify communications channelsPut a note next to each category of constituent in terms of how they will be notified. The more important the constituent group, the more personal the method of communication — such as individual phone calls — should be. Communication choices can also include email, texting, bulk texting, robocalls, listserves, online bulletin boards, social media posts, direct messages, website posts and more.
5. Create talking points for your key constituentsFor personal phone calls to your most important constituents, write talking points that can be shared amongst staff or volunteers to quickly spread the word. You can later convert your talking points into a written event cancellation email that can be shared more broadly.
6. Write an announcement or news release for wide distribution (see sample email at the end).Writing a cancellation email for an event can be stressful; you may be fielding calls and responding to complaints and unhappy ticket holders. Have a trusted colleague or your executive director review your email to look for gaps in information and grammar, spelling or punctuation mistakes. Sharing your announcement as a Google doc will allow multiple people to offer comments and edits in a unified place as opposed to edits coming in piecemeal from multiple sources. Give your editors a deadline so they know when you’ll be moving forward with the email and can respond accordingly. Mistakes are more likely when you are running on adrenaline, so don’t forget to ask for proofing assistance.
Your event cancellation email or announcement may include:
- The reason for the event cancellation or postponement.
- An offer to transfer tickets to the new event (in case of postponement) or an indication that you will assume that attendees will use their ticket for the new event date unless you hear otherwise from them. Let ticket holders know how to communicate this information to you and decide what details you want to know. It’s best to collect information in bulk; create an online form or use your event registration system to create a new event to collect registrations. Note that if you are a MembershipWorks customer, you may decide to move your event and current registrants to another date as mentioned in step 3.
- An offer to convert individual ticket purchases into donations. You may want to follow up with a donation thank you letter to each ticket holder if you opt to do this. Some purchasers may still want a refund. Be generous with your refund policy so as to avoid damaging your group’s reputation and potentially hurting ticket sales for your next event.
- What refunds or transfers are available and how to take advantage of them. If you’ve postponed, consider that your new event date or location may not work for everyone, so refunds will be important to some. Offering refunds helps you gracefully cancel an event; it fosters goodwill.
- A discount code for a future event to foster goodwill.
- A list of frequently asked questions along with answers so that you can avoid repeatedly answering the same questions on a one-on-one basis. If you put a link to the FAQs in your email and post the full FAQ list on your site, you can keep adding additional questions and answers as they come in. Your FAQs might include:
- Why was the event cancelled?
- Why didn’t you let ticket holders know sooner?
- How and when are you compensating/refunding attendees?
- How are you working with participating vendors, booth purchasers, exhibitors, etc. to help them?
- Information on the rescheduled event (if applicable), including any changes to location, speaker lineup, number of tickets available, etc.
- Whom to contact for more information. You may want to designate different points of contact depending upon the type of constituent. For example, local media should be in touch with your communications staff whereas ticket holders may need to reach out to someone else. While it may be tempting to not include contact information (for fear of being overwhelmed by questions), this should be strongly avoided. Attendees can become frustrated and may vent publicly online, leave bad reviews or spread inaccurate gossip.
7. Distribute messages according to the audience and the urgency of the message If you offered online event registration and collected email addresses, it makes sense to send cancellation information through that channel. However, if less than 24 hours remains before your event, you may need to text or call your ticket holders. Younger attendees may not check emails that often; texting or social media will be a better way to reach them. Older ticket holders may have included a phone number, but they may have put down a landline number that can not receive texts, so calls may be in order.
One local theatre group that had to postpone opening night with 48 hours notice opted to both email and either call or text each ticket holder. Younger patrons (identified as those who asked for tickets to be delivered electronically to their phone) received texts. Those who asked for will call tickets were thought to be older patrons and were personally called. The theatre considered their communication efforts a success as no patron came to the door on the originally-scheduled opening night.
8. Consider bulk message options. Most organizations have bulk email capability through their event registration system or email marketing platform, but do not have the capability to send bulk texts (SMS) or do robocalls. You can task your communications team with identifying and setting up vendors to use for these services. Your event software should allow you to export contact information to upload for use in a bulk messaging system if you decide to use one.
9. Circle back to social media and local media outlets where your event has been promoted or listed. Edit any existing posts and Facebook events to include something along the lines of, “UPDATE…This event has been cancelled,” to get readers’ attention should they come looking for information. Make new posts on each social media channel that includes the full text of your statement or a link to read the full text. Post in any Facebook groups where you posted messages before. Creating a graphic with a prominent message of cancellation or postponement will catch attention better than plain text. You should change out existing graphics with the new one as well as make new posts with it.
If your local paper or online media have promoted your event, be in touch with them to ask them to edit the event listing with your new information.
What are Valid Reasons to Cancel an Event?
Covid-19 has brought about a multitude of challenges for event planners. Some of the reasons Covid-19 may cause an event planner cancel an event:
- Changes in local restrictions regarding public gatherings — such as limiting the number of event attendees
- Covid infection among key speakers/presenters or key event staff
- Implementation of travel restrictions requiring extended quarantine for guests or presenters traveling from out of state or out of the country
- New or reinstated mask requirements that would make certain types of events untenable (e.g. an indoor event centering around food or drink)
- Social distancing requirements that may rule out the use of your venue based upon the number of attendees and their ability to distance
If you’ve planned an outdoor event, it may feel like you live and die by the words of your local weather forecaster. Deciding to cancel an event due to bad weather like a thunderstorm, tornado warning or high winds is a difficult and heart-wrenching one, especially when you have put so much work into event planning.
Indoor events have one less factor that may sabotage success, but they are certainly not immune to trouble. HVAC, plumbing or electrical issues at the event venue, lackluster ticket sales or low attendance, speaker cancellations and local or national tragedies can force you to cancel your event as well.
Cancelling due to low attendance is tricky; it can badly damage your organization’s reputation. Sometimes it is better to hold the event anyway, especially if people have made travel arrangements to attend.
How To Write An Apology Letter for An Event Cancellation Step by Step Guide | Writing Practices
What is a cancellation letter?
A cancellation letter is a formal notice to a guest that an event will not occur or will be postponed. Efficient cancellation letters often include information about the event, refunds and potential dates for postponement. Learning to write a cancellation letter can be beneficial if you’re a professional event planner or host many events.
How do you write an event cancellation email?
Stick to the facts. The purpose of the email is to relay the facts. You are informing recipients of the event cancellation. All content in the email should be related to the event cancellation and nothing else. Don’t include information about other events. Maintain positivity.
What makes a good event cancellation email?
The key to a good event cancelled email is paying attention to detail and being specific when necessary. Each phrase should be polite and imply your remorse about canceling. Also, update them on any next steps. Here are some event cancellation email templates you can use as a framework for your message.
Should you send an event cancellation email to a guest?
An event cancellation announcement email to a guest will always feel more genuine when you’re transparent. But always remember, in your cancellation confirmation email or any other, keep it succinct and honest. Picture this: you’re dropping that meeting cancellation email or maybe sending out an event cancellation email.
