Welcome to the combined January-February issue of Limelight, where we pack two months of good reading into one expanded magazine – your perfect summer arts companion.

Limelight turns 50 in 2026 and we begin our half-centenary celebrations with the biggest issue we have published since launching our redesign in October 2020. Our January/February magazine is always a bumper holiday read. This year, we have added even more pages – a bumper-bumper issue!

As we step into a new year, Limelight’s expert writers – Jansson J. Antmann, Paul Ballam-Cross, Steve Dow, Yvonne Frindle, Deborah Jones and Jo Litson – survey the year ahead – the themes, challenges and the likely artistic high points. Encompassing Australia’s major festivals, orchestral and chamber programs, and theatre and opera seasons, this is also your guide to the must-see and must-hear events that will shape 2026.

As always, January’s Sydney Festival fires the opening salvo for the arts. In this issue, French writer-director Caroline Guiela Nguyen speaks to Steve Dow about the making of one of the Festival’s keystone events, Lacrima, and about her intricate, interwoven approach to storytelling. Also in the Sydney Festival is musical theatre star Natalie Abbott’s most personal show yet, Bad Hand. She talks to Jo Litson about the loss that flipped her cabaret script.

Ahead of a new production of Yasmina Reza’s international stage hit ART, Jo sits down with director Lee Lewis to uncork this “lightning in a bottle” all-male three-hander – and to explore why it’s irresistible to some of our highest-profile actors.

Limelight’s Editor-at-Large Clive Paget meets the irrepressible Jaime Martín, Chief Conductor of the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, to discuss curiosity, cooking, the podium and why he’s returning to the flute as a soloist. Clive also speaks with Jeneba Kanneh-Mason about her new album reflecting on Jane Austen’s musical world.

Puccini expert Alexandra Wilson looks ahead to Opera Australia’s brand-new, centenary production of Turandot, reinvented for the present day by Chinese-American director and choreographer Ann Yee. New dad Paul Ballam-Cross explores the imaginative world of children’s music in his feature Child’s Play; and Vincent Plush chats with the Pulitzer Prize-winning composer John Luther Adams, whose new work, Horizon, will be premiered by the Australian Chamber Orchestra.

Our monthly Cutting Edge column sharpens Limelight’s focus on artists working boldly on the edges. Six years after slipping into self-imposed hibernation, Lost and Found Opera makes its return at Perth Festival with a site-specific staging of Philip Glass’s The Trial in an empty city office block – one promising the kind of imaginative reinvention that made the company a cult favourite.

In our regular Playing Up column, Tibetan-Australian musician Tenzin Choegyal shares how voice, dranyen, flute and his memories of growing up shape his sound. Also in this issue, composer Tristan Coelho introduces his new harp concerto, written for his wife Emily Granger and the Queensland Symphony Orchestra, while Clive Paget rounds up the best new recordings.

This month’s film review zooms in on Richard Linklater’s Nouvelle Vague, a lovingly reconstructed time machine for lovers of French cinema. And in his monthly Soapbox column, Guy Noble – triggered by a jazz-loving carpenter and a new kitchen – ponders whether classical music might be just a little too beholden to the printed page.

Wherever you’re spending your summer – travelling, resting or escaping the heat with a good read – we’re delighted to have your company for another year of great storytelling, great music and great art.

Happy New Year!

The January–February 2026 issue of Limelight will be available online from Monday 22 December. Subscribe to Limelight by Sunday 14 December, 11:59pm AEDT to receive the print edition as soon as it’s available.

Purchase an annual subscription and you could win a copy of Classic 100: Piano – Highlights (4CD), along with acclaimed pianist Víkingur Ólafsson’s albums From Afar and Reflections. Four runners-up will each receive copies of Ólafsson’s albums. Prizes courtesy of Universal Music Australia. Learn more.