It’s still uncertain whether Burning Man will go ahead in 2021, but this hasn’t stopped the organisers from optimistically releasing a theme.

The event’s organisers have announced the theme to be “Terra Incógnita” which translates to “Unknown Land”.

Last year’s event wasn’t able to go ahead due to the pandemic, so instead the team behind the festival in Nevada launched an online events platform called Kindling.

Kindling kept the event’s fires lit, and they helped maintain public interest by also releasing a Burning Man documentary called Art On Fire.

Burning Man’s organisers in January 2021 released a statement saying it’s “impossible to say right now” if the festival can go ahead this year.

So the fact they have been optimistic enough to release a theme suggests building confidence that they will be at their Black Rock City location.

Unknown Land is a theme that appears to take direct influence from how the COVID-19 pandemic has changed the world. The theme was described by organisers on the Burning Man Journal as: “an invitation to emerge from our collective isolation, to explore the unfamiliar contours of a changed world, and to reimagine ourselves, our community, and our culture in ways that might not have been possible before this period of plague and pause.”

The Burning Man Journal post went on to say: “After a year without Black Rock City we’re all longing to reconnect – for a going home after all that staying home. Yet our enforced apartness has also served as a powerful reminder that the idea of home is just that – an idea – and not a particular place. Quarantine has led us to rethink the very meaning of place, and rid us of certain illusions about it – like the notion that our city was always there somehow, always a certain way, which was never true at all. It was always a figment of our collective imaginations, and fundamentally different each and every year.”

“It’s a time of great loss, but also of rare opportunity: a chance to reevaluate, reconnect, and return to our roots, to the values that brought us together in the first place… 

“Now more than ever, the work ahead is about more than Black Rock City.”

The full update on the Burning Man Journal can be found HERE