Bubble Tea Festival

Overview

Whether you like your bubble tea alcoholic, vegan or filled with creamy cheese, you'll want to make a bee line to Melbourne's newest festival. Taking over Melbourne Central, the inaugural Bubble Tea Festival will see six of the city's best bubble tea makers come together for four very-tasty days.

Coinciding with Lunar New Year, the festival will run from Friday, January 24–Sunday, January 27. During that time, the CBD shopping centre's bubble tea retailers will be serving up weird and wonderful limited-edition flavours. You'll find honeydew frozen tea at Chatime, sakura lychee tea at Gotcha, taro smoothie at Gong Cha, strawberry cheese tea at Heekcha and an alcoholic lychee number at B. Lucky & Sons.

B Lucky & Sons

Joining the party is a pop-up Nuttea store — a Taiwanese vegan nut mylk tea store, which'll be serving up a ruby black tea made with plant-based cream — and a Bubble Tea Mart filled with adorable merch. To get your hands on the merch, you'll need to first buy a drinkable bubble tea from one of Melbourne Central's eight retailers and grab a Boba Token. You can then exchange this token for bubble tea-themed cups, keyrings, totes, straws, earring, Airpod cases and more.

To round out the fun, there'll also be free tunes from the likes of Eurovision contender Jaguar Jonze, DJ Jade Zoe and DJ Small Fry.

Images: Gotcha