After declaring the 2023 Sydney Festival a resounding success with festival attendance reaching in excess of 420,000, Sydney Festival organisers have announced that Festival Artistic Director Olivia Ansell has accepted an invitation to extend her tenure through to 2025.

Ansell was named Festival Director in 2021 before leading her first festival in January of 2022. Her initial three-year appointment was to see her in the role through to 2024.

Since joining Sydney Festival, Ansell has brokered numerous world-premiere productions, commissioned large-scale Australian works and collaborated with the international cultural community to help bring Sydney Festival back to prominence after the COVID hiatus.

Sydney Festival Artistic Director Olivia Ansell. Photo © Wendell Teodoro.

Audiences and visitors surged back to the city and its surrounds after a challenging period of lockdowns, cancellations and wild weather. The 2023 Festival welcomed 420,234 attendances into theatres, public parks, outdoor spaces, galleries, clubs, swimming pools and hospitality venues. The immersive Frida Kahlo: The Life of an Icon exhibition, covering 1750 square metres in a major takeover of The Cutaway at Barangaroo, drew 86,205 attendees.

Sydney Festival also extended its footprint in Western Sydney, with highlights including a sell-out season for international circus troupe Kalabanté...