Planning for the south-west's range of summer music festivals would normally be in full swing.

But the lingering impacts of COVID-19 and uncertainty about when crowd restrictions will ease are causing headaches for organisers.

Port Fairy Folk festival president John Young said the committee was "planning as normal" for the four-day March long-weekend event but it looked like recruiting a stellar international lineup wouldn't be possible.

"We are scheduling our normal timelines for planning and it's business as usual," he said.

"The scenario we're assuming is international travel won't be resumed or international acts won't be ready to travel across the world.

"We're looking at an all-Australian line-up and to New Zealand and having a somewhat reduced crowd.

"We don't know what will be in March, but we have reasonable expectations."

The folk festival is not only an enjoyable event for the variety of attendees - the event contributes grants back into the community. The 2020 event was one of the last music festivals to go ahead before restrictions were introduced.

Goomfest at Wangoom ran for its second year in January with 500 attendees. Organiser Sam Pyers is beginning to get excited about what his 2021 event could look like.

"I'm planning as usual with a few extra precautions," he said.

"Despite the hurdles, it looks like there will be a 2021 event and we're wanting to bring a connection for people over music and arts.

"We're hoping to reinvigorate the local scene, which has been greatly impacted by the pandemic.

"Hopefully we can point this energy in a positive direction and have great connection with our events again."

Princetown's Loch Hart Music Festival is pencilled in for November 20-22 and director Jayden Bath is hopeful there will be capacity for his event, which attracted about 900 revellers.

"Normally we'd be at the point of selling tickets, we'd have 75 per cent of the line-up booked and I would be meeting with council regularly to discuss the event," Mr Bath said.

"At this stage we're gathering information on what the fest can, may and should look like this year.

"If we had to make it a 500-person event it could still be cool, but is having a 100 person event feasible? If we can't have Loch Hart in 2020, we can extend to 2021 but after that is a question."

In its fourth year, Loch Hart secures up-and-coming alternative acts and about 50 per cent of the 2019 lineup was made up of south-west artists.

"We've always tried to support our local musicians first and foremost and we aren't at the stage where we're looking at international acts but we're also not ruling it out for future," Mr Bath said.

"Being so young in the festival scene is a double edged sword; we're still finding our feet and our market so this could disrupt our growth. But if we can get through it, we'll come back strong.

"Music and the events scene were the first hit by the coronavirus and it looks like they are going to be the last to come back."

Warrnambool-based Raglan Presents launched a number of one day festivals in venues across the city in 2019 and have expansion plans in the works.

One third of the group James Kol is hopeful their day party summer events will still go ahead in some form.

"We are making plans to run events with decreased capacity and have secured venues to host smaller crowds," he said.

"We've made no cancellations, the only thing we are still waiting for are artists' availability are still in the unknown as larger festivals have been rescheduled.

"The whole industry is a bit unknown, we're waiting until end of July to see what the government comes out with.

"We are hopeful come late September and early October we can start running events that bring the community together, everyone is excited to see each other and for our demographic, music events are an integral part of social lives."

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