STRASBOURG: The 25th edition of France's Colmar Jazz Festival, scheduled for September, has been postponed until next year due to the coronavirus epidemic, the city said in a statement on Wednesday.

"Current progress in the health crisis does not allow us today, realistically, to consider staging concerts in September," the statement says, adding that this edition of the festival will now take place in 2021.

Guitarists Sylvain Luc and Bireli Lagrene, American singer China Moses, daughter of Dee Dee Bridgewater, and French pianist Sebastian Troendle were to perform at this year's festival in the city near the Rhine river border with Germany.

Attracting more than 5,000 people last year, the show had been due to run from September 10 to 28.

Nevertheless, a concert by gypsy jazz guitarist Angelo Debarre will go ahead on September 24 at the nearby town of Selestat.

The Colmar Film Festival, slated for October, has also been cancelled for the same reason with city officials judging it to be "impossible to welcome film and television personalities in the friendly and festive conditions that make the festival famous."

France has recorded over 225,000 cases of coronavirus and over 30,000 deaths since the disease emerged at the end of 2019. A recent upsurge has seen new preventive measures reintroduced.