Events To Look Forward To In Spring 2020! Banner Year For Superhero Movies! Summer Olympics! And More!

Image by dan onaca from Pixabay

So far, 2020 hasn’t been a disappointment in terms of world events and scandal. However, spring is upon us, and there’s more to look forward to this year. Now that the winter is almost over and the weather is warming up, there is plenty to get excited about and to get planning for. From the 2020 NHL Playoffs to the 2020 Mission to Mars, this year has it all, so here are a few events you might want to get in your diary or add to your 2020 bucket list.

Vietnam Grand Prix

On April 5th 2020, Vietnam will host the first Grand Prix in the country’s history and will host the third race of the 2020 Formula One season which is set to take place on a street circuit in the capital, Hanoi. The race will feature one of the longest straightaways on the Formula One calendar, and cars are expected to reach speeds of up to 208 miles per hour. Competing in this year’s event will be Lewis Hamilton and Mercedes who, in 2019 both won their sixth championships and will be among the favourites to repeat the trick. The championship is expected to draw over 300,000 fans, and as Formula One racing continues its global expansion, 2020 will also see the first Dutch Grand Prix since 1985.

A Bumper Year For Superhero Movies

From both Marvel and DC, if you’re a superhero fan, you won’t be disappointed this year. From DC we’ll see Wonder Woman 1984, and we’ve already been treated to an epic Birds of Prey. Then from Marvel, there’ll be Venom 2 and Black Widow to name a few. Then we can also look forward to Mobius, who is a vampire villain and one of Spider-Man’s enemies, played by Jared Leto; there’s Eternals who are super-powered humans played by Angelina Jolie, Richard Madden, Gemma Chan and Kit Harington hitting the screens this year.

The 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo

Another sporting event for this year to look forward to and to top it off; the 2020 games will feature five new sports. As well as there being a tonne of new events in existing sports and established categories, the 2020 Tokyo Olympics will introduce karate, baseball/softball, skateboarding, sports climbing and surfing. The games will begin in July in Tokyo for the first time since 1964, which will make it the first Asian city to host the Games twice. The tech-savvy and culturally rich city will likely make the games unmissable and particularly festive. Most of the events will be taking place in two areas of Tokyo, which are the Heritage Zone, which was where the 1964 Olympics was held. This year they will be using revamped buildings. Other events will be taking place at the Tokyo Bay Zone, which is designed to serve as a “model for innovative urban development.”

The Elections

The 2020 Presidential race is one not to be missed. A significant time in US history, these elections will affect the whole world and not just those in the US. Other than the main election which isn’t until November, 11 states will be holding gubernatorial elections this year which could be fun. And according to the Pew Research Center, nonwhite voters will represent a third of eligible voters, which will mean that this year will see the youngest and most diverse electorate in American history – it could be an interesting result.

Euro 2020

The European football tournament will be held in not one, but twelve nations this year. An exciting year for the European Championship as 2020 marks the 60th anniversary of the first European Championship in 1960.  So this year, Uefa decided to take the tournament on the road. Twelve host nations have been selected, with group games spread across four time zones and nearly 4,000 miles – this could be the perfect excuse to travel Europe this summer. Even if you don’t get tickets to a game, the atmosphere will be immense in the cities or get yourself down to a Fan Park. Official fan parks give supporters in host cities somewhere safe and suitable to watch the games in huge numbers – which is a lot of fun!

Uefa has promised huge screens, festivals, community events, street activations and pop-up concerts in host cities throughout the tournament.

The Mars 2020 Mission

In late July or early August, the new rover is headed for Mars and will join the Curiosity rover on the Red Planet. The Mars 2020 rover features 23 cameras and two microphones which will be able to capture the sounds of the rover landing as well as any other noises on Mars. The Mars 2020 mission will lift off from Cape Canaveral, between July 17 and Aug. 5 and will head to the Jezero Crater on Mars. The purpose of the mission, which is scheduled to last at least one Martian year or about 687 Earth days, is to gather information which is related to the habitability of the red planet. The rover will be focused on an experiment testing a possible method for producing oxygen from the planet’s atmosphere.

The World Dog Show

Who wouldn’t love a world dog show? Hosted by the Spanish Royal Canine Society, the show will take place on 23, 24, 25 and 26 April. It will feature 15,000 participating dogs of more than 300 different breeds, who will be judged by 100 international canine judges. If the past world dog shows are anything to go by, this year’s is one not to be missed. In 2015 when the show was hoster in Milan, there were almost 20,000 dogs; in Helsinki, in 2014 there were 21,300; in Budapest 2013 there were more than 18,500; in Salzburg 2012 there were 18,000, and in Paris 2011 there were around 21,600.

An Innovative Year in Dubai

This year, Dubai will become the first Middle Eastern venue in the 170-year history of the Bureau International des Expositions. Not only is this an achievement for the UAE and Dubai, but the Expo is set to see representation from more than 190 nations and will feature three subthemes: opportunity, mobility and sustainability, each with its own pavilion. The 2020 World Expo will be on for half of the year and is like a World’s Fair, where countries will showcase the newest in art, technology, science and countless other spheres. Expo 2020 will centre around a huge, specially built indoor-outdoor area between Dubai and the northern border of neighbouring Abu Dhabi.

The Rise of High-Speed Rail

We all know that high-speed rail is the future of land travel, but the concept has been slow so far with many projects taking longer than expected or falling off track completely (excuse the pun). However, in 2020, several high-speed rail systems are due to get on track (punning again), and other plans could move forward in significant ways. To begin with, there’s Virgin Trains USA which will begin construction in late 2020 on a new $4.8 billion, 170-mile high-speed train line from Victorville, California, to Las Vegas. There is another Virgin Trains line which is between Miami and West Palm Beach, and that is already in operation, and due to expand to Orlando in the coming years.) There are plans for a high-speed line between Houston and Dallas and construction for this could start as early as this summer. It’s not just Virgin who’s speeding this plans up, but Microsoft is also helping to move along with a plan for a railway between Seattle and Vancouver. The company, headquartered in Redmond, Washington, shelled out $223,000 in October 2019 to finish an exploratory study into the project by 2020. And that’s just the US – there’s more high-speed rail around the world, to help us stay even better connected than we already are.

The Tapis de Fleurs

Also known as Flower Carpet, The Tapis de Fleurs takes place every other summer in Brussels and offers visitors a chance to stroll across the city’s gorgeous central square, the Grand Place. The Tapis de Fleurs is the result of a group of illustrators, designers and landscape architects who collaborate to create a giant 75-meter-long drawing based on a specific theme. After they have laid down the drawing on the cobblestones, over 100 volunteer gardeners piece together the floral puzzle in about eight hours.

So, if you’ve not made any plans just yet, then get ready for spring and book some stuff in. It’s going to be an exciting year ahead.