Around Sydney
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If you were under the impression that Sydney’s summer fun peaks in December, you stand corrected. Every summer, right after the dust settles from the Harbour City’s sparkling NYE fireworks display, Sydney Festival is waiting to take over the city with a hefty helping of fresh arts and culture. This is your chance to get in on an almost-month-long program overflowing with avant garde performances, immersive art installations, phenomenal live musicians and parties that rock on well into the night. This year, the annual event is turning 50 – and if you were expecting a quiet midlife moment, think again.
This summer, from January 8 to January 25, the city is throwing itself into a full-blown cultural block party, cracking open five decades of artistic history and inviting everyone in for a look at what’s next. Under the direction of Kris Nelson, who’s stepping up for his first year at the helm, the 2026 program is a sprawling, joy-sparking mix of theatre, music, dance and art.
At the heart of this anniversary edition is a deep dive into connection across generations, playing out through a (delightfully off-the-wall) theatre program. There’s the world-premiere roller-derby spectacular Mama Does Derby, which will see Virginia Gay and Clare Watson transform Sydney Town Hall into a full-scale rink for a tender, sweaty mother-daughter story. There’s Dear Son, bringing Thomas Mayo’s powerful collection of letters to the Belvoir stage with music, dance and theatre-makers Isaac Drandic and John Harvey. And there are intergenerational jam sessions with Alabama-born creative icon Lonnie Holley, whose improvised soundscapes – joined by local legends including AMP-winner Kankawa Nagarra – promise to hit you right in the guts.
The celebration of First Nations excellence Blak Out will return under Creative Artist in Residence Jacob Nash. The program will open with Lucy Simpson’s HELD sculptures rising over Barangaroo’s Stargazer Lawn and will close, as always, with Vigil: Belong – a ceremony of song, story and smoke led by Nardi Simpson. In between, we’ll see Joel Bray’s massive harbour-side dance ritual Garabari, Jannawi Dance Clan’s world premiere Garrigarrang Badu, and a revival of 1970s activism with Redfern Renaissance.
Other headline spectacles are coming thick and fast. Live at Hickson Road: Effectos Especiales will turn Walsh Bay into a live-action movie set-meets-street party, complete with Argentinian cinema chaos and choreography. Over at the Roslyn Packer Theatre, LACRIMA – a sweeping, multilingual epic from Caroline Guiela Nguyen – will trace the human hands behind a princess’s wedding gown, while Khalid Abdalla’s solo piece Nowhere will dig into global history through the lens of personal loss, protest and transformation.
And then there’s the music. Beloved synth-pop icons Hot Chip are taking over the Opera House for two nights of indie-dance catharsis, Sydney Symphony Under the Stars will relocate to Tumbalong Park for a huge, open-air birthday celebration, and the ACO’s On The Pier program featured everything from Mongolian jazz performances to an intimate, lie-down sonic meditation. Meanwhile, the City Recital Hall will continue carving out its niche as one of the city’s most genre-blending performance spaces, with Paris Paloma, Nooriyah and DJ Habibeats headlining their January line-up.
With heaps of shows taking place across the city across the 18-day program, that’s really just scratching the surface. You can learn more and book tickets over here.
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