Sydney Festival 2026
A live-action movie shoot at Walsh Bay, Hot Chip at the Opera House and a full-scale roller-derby show at Sydney Town Hall headline Sydney Festival's 50th edition.
Overview
Sydney Festival turns 50 in 2026, and it's marking the milestone with a citywide celebration of culture and connection. From January 8–25, the annual summer spectacular will take over stages, parks and galleries — plus unexpected spaces like alleyways, pools and even a working funeral home — for a three-week program spanning theatre, dance, music, cabaret, visual art and immersive experiences. It's all designed to spark imagination and reframe how we experience art in the city.
The 2026 program — the first under new Festival Director Kris Nelson — puts multi-generational storytelling front and centre. That includes everything from the world premiere of Virginia Gay's roller derby-meets-theatre hybrid Mama Does Derby, which transforms Sydney Town Hall into a full-scale derby track, to Dear Son, a moving stage adaptation by Thomas Mayo of intimate letters between First Nations fathers and sons. Over at AOC On The Pier, American polymath Lonnie Holley will lead two nights of improvised jam sessions, joined by elder Kankawa Nagarra and emerging Sydney neo-soul vocalist Yasmina Sadiki.
The outdoors will be just as lively. Live at Hickson Road: Effectos Especiales sees trailblazing Argentinian filmmaker Alejo Moguillansky turn Walsh Bay into an action-packed live movie set, with festivalgoers invited to play extra or spectator. Meanwhile, the much-loved Sydney Symphony Under the Stars relocates to Tumbalong Park for a special 50th-anniversary edition beneath the night sky. And in Darling Harbour, acclaimed sculptor Julia Phillips' Observer, Observed makes its international debut after a year-long installation on New York City's High Line, inviting passers-by to peer into a giant pair of bronze binoculars — only to find their own eyes broadcast live on a nearby screen.
Theatre and dance lovers will have plenty to choose from. At Roslyn Packer Theatre, LACRIMA (pictured below) is a sweeping, multilingual epic from French director Caroline Guiela Nguyen tracing the global creation of a royal wedding gown, from Parisian ateliers to embroiderers in Mumbai. British actor and activist Khalid Abdalla blends the personal and political in his genre-defying solo work Nowhere, while South Korean choreographer Eun-Me Ahn brings her kaeidoscopic Post-Orientalist Express to town for a rare Australian appearance. And in EXXY, Dan Daw revisits the early memories and identities that shaped his celebrated practice as a queer, disabled dance artist.
Jean Louis Fernandez
Cabaret also forms a core part of the program. Comedy firebrand Reuben Kaye storms the Sydney Opera House for one night only — and with an 18-piece ensemble, no less — with enGORGEd, his flashiest show to date, while WAKE, by boundary-pushing Dublin troupe THISISPOPBABY, combines breakdancing, tap, aerial artistry, slam poetry and live music as it reimagines the traditional Irish wake. Other cabaret highlights include Bad Hand, a raw, big-hearted musical memoir by theatre and screen star Natalie Abbott and a stirring tribute to Nina Simone featuring the commanding vocals of Ursula Yovich.
There's also a stacked music lineup. London synth-pop darlings Hot Chip return to the Sydney Opera House for two euphoric nights, while UK singer-songwriter Paris Paloma brings her feminist anthems to City Recital Hall. Elsewhere, global club favourite Nooriyah teams up with DJ Habibeats for a high-energy set, while South London's Raf-Saperra brings his electrifying fusion of Punjabi folk, garage and drill to Sydney for the first time. And in addition to Holley's improvised jams, ACO On The Pier will also welcome Mongolian jazz vocalist Enji, Indigenous Mexican hip-hop powerhouse Mare Advertencia and genre-bending Persian-Aotearoan artist CHAII (pictured below).
Sydney Festival's revered Blak Out program also returns for its final year under Creative Artist in Residence Jacob Nash. Highlights include Lucy Simpson's sculptural installation series HELD at Barangaroo, which will also serve as the setting for Vigil: Belong, a moving sunset ceremony honouring songlines, ancestry and Country by the artist's sister, musician and writer Nardi Simpson. Also on the billing: Garabari, a massive outdoor dance ritual that transforms Sydney Opera House's Northern Boardwalk into an openair dance floor, Bangarra Dance Theatre's The Bogong's Song: A Call to Country, an all-ages journey into the Dreaming and Redfern Renaissance, which celebrates the art and activism of the 1970s National Black Theatre through performance readings and conversations.
Rounding out the program is the expanded Summer School, which turns galleries, pools, laneways and a working funeral home into pop-up classrooms for workshops and talks, plus a suite of family-friendly highlights like WAVERIDER, staged on a giant inflatable wave at Bondi Pavilion.
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