Lightscape Sydney
This dazzling after-dark festival is taking over to the Royal Botanic Garden Sydney for Vivid 2024 with a new 1.8-kilometre trail.
Overview
Strolling through stunning lights as far as the eye can see, moseying beneath a canopy of glowing multi-coloured trees, wandering between ribbons of flashing beams, taking the most luminous 1.8-kilometre stroll through nature that you can imagine — you can do all of this again thanks to Lightscape's return to Sydney in 2024.
If you went to the 2023 version, this second Lightscape stint in the New South Wales capital is also part of Vivid Sydney. For two years in a row, one dazzling event hosts another, then, with 2024's iteration running from Friday, May 24–Saturday, June 15.
Once more, the after-dark light festival is taking over the Royal Botanic Garden Sydney, beaming away from 5pm each night. Prepare to see the garden illuminated by immersive and large-scale installations scattered along that almost two-kilometre route, including sparkling trees, luminous walkways and bursts of colour that look like fireworks. A big highlight: large-scale works like giant flowers and glowing tunnels, both of which will make you feel like you're being bathed in radiance.
But don't go thinking that you'll just be repeating what you saw last year, because 2024's Lightscape in Sydney has been reimagined. Standouts this year include Winter Cathedral, which is made out of glowing bulbs; Light a Wish, where dandelions will appear to defy gravity; Floraison, complete with suspended flowers; the blooming Blossom; the self-explanatory Neon Outline Trees; and the geometric Trapezoid.
Lightscape first hit Australia in 2022 after initially taking over gardens across the United Kingdom and the United States. Developed by Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew in the UK, it's understandably proven a huge success — and more than two-million people wandered along its glowing trails in a single season overseas.
In the Harbour City, pop-up food and drink stalls are scattered throughout Lightscape at Royal Botanic Garden Sydney — selling, we hope, mulled wine to keep hands warm during the chilly winter nights.
Images: Dianne Brooks.
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