Sydney Festival will celebrate its 50th anniversary in January 2026 with a sweeping program promising to transform Sydney into what new Festival Director Kris Nelson calls “a playground of imagination”– one spanning theatre, dance, music, visual art and immersive experience across historic venues and pop-up stages.

“Inspired by the complexity of our global city, this edition brings leading international and Australian artists whose performances will resonate with everyone,” Nelson said. “Over the next four years, my vision is to create festivals that transform us – shaping not just the shows we present, but how Sydneysiders experience art, and inspiring us to imagine the future of this great city together.”

Salty Brine’s The Queen is Dead, Redfern Renaissance and Opera for the Dead. Photos supplied

The 2026 festival marks both a golden jubilee and a symbolic handover with Nelson succeeding Olivia Ansell as Festival Director. Central to his approach is the idea of connection through culture: artists and audiences meeting across generations, communities and creative disciplines.

Among the flagship new works is Virginia Gay’s Mama Does Derby, a full-scale roller-derby spectacular that converts Sydney Town Hall into a neon-lit arena. The Calamity Jane star teams up with Windmill’s Clare Watson to tell the story of a mother and daughter finding strength and solidarity on the rink in a heart-pumping celebration of resilience, reinvention and family bonds.

Elsewhere, acclaimed French writer-director Caroline Guiela Nguyen brings the Australian premiere of Lacrima, an epic international co-production revealing the unseen human stories stitched into a royal wedding gown. Performed in French, Tamil, English and sign language, the three-hour work blends cinematic scale and theatrical intimacy to trace a web of beauty, labour and belonging.

Film and performance collide on the streets of Walsh Bay in Live at Hickson Road: Effectos Especiales, a free outdoor event by Argentinian filmmaker Alejo Moguillansky and choreographer Luciana Acuña; part street show, part live movie shoot. Spectators become both extras and eyewitnesses as the precinct turns into a living film set accompanied by live music.

Blak Out at the heart

The Blak Out program – curated for the final time by Jacob Nash as Creative Artist in Residence – anchors the festival in First Nations storytelling. Its centrepiece, HELD, features monumental sculptural vessels by Yuwaalaraay Wirringgaa artist Lucy Simpson installed on Barangaroo’s Stargazer Lawn, symbolising the connection between earth, sky, fire and sea Country.

These works become the setting for Vigil: Belong, the festival’s closing ceremony on 25 January, where sacred smoke will rise over the harbour as Nardi Simpson, Lucy’s sister, leads singers from every generation in songs tracing musical ancestry.

Bangerra Dance Theatre: The Bogong’s Song. Photo © Daniel Boud

Across the festival, the Blak Out program will feature new works by Bangarra Dance Theatre, whose The Bogong’s Song invites young audiences into a Dreaming-inspired world of dance and shadow puppetry; Joel Bray’s large-scale harbour dance ritual Garabari, blending movement and projection under the stars; and Jannawi Dance Clan’s Garrigarrang Badu, an all-female performance honouring Dharug Country and women’s roles in cultural continuation.

Redfern’s activist legacy is revived in Redfern Renaissance, curated by Angeline Penrith, honouring the trailblazers of the 1970s National Black Theatre, while Dear Son (read Limelight‘s review) brings Thomas Mayo’s anthology of letters between First Nations fathers and sons to the Belvoir stage under directors Isaac Drandic and John Harvey.

Music under the stars — and beyond

The beloved Sydney Symphony Under the Stars will move to a new home at Tumbalong Park, Darling Harbour, on 17 January. The free outdoor concert promises an “unforgettable evening of music and community,” Nelson said, celebrating half a century of collaboration between the orchestra and the festival.

Sydney Symphony Under the Stars. Photo supplied

In the spirit of intergenerational exchange, Lonnie Holley, the 74-year-old American artist and musician renowned for his improvisatory soundscapes, will lead a series of jam sessions at ACO on the Pier, joined by elder and blues artist Kankawa Nagarra and Sydney’s Yasmina Sadiki.

The live-music lineup stretches from Hot Chip, returning to the Sydney Opera House for two nights of euphoric electropop, to Ursula Yovich’s tribute to Nina Simone, and the joyous chaos of Bogan Villea, the rock-drag alter ego of Ben Graetz.

Across City Recital Hall and Western Sydney venues, the festival’s international scope widens further. UK feminist singer-songwriter Paris Paloma, Mongolian jazz vocalist Enji, Mexican Indigenous hip-hop artist Mare Advertencia, and South London Punjabi rapper Raf-Saperra all feature, alongside genre-bending performances by CHAII, Milan Ring and Tenzin Choegyal.

Dance, cabaret and immersive adventures

Dance remains a festival mainstay, from Eun-Me Ahn’s kaleidoscopic Post-Orientalist Express – a satire on Asian traditions and modernity – to Dan Daw’s EXXY, an autobiographical exploration of disability and identity.

Italian choreographer Alessandro Sciarroni revives the forgotten all-male polka Polka Chinata in Save the Last Dance for Me, while the double bill Sisa-Sisa offers raw meditations on trauma, memory and survival through Indonesian movement and music.

Alessandro Sciarroni’s Save the Last Dance for Me. Photo supplied

Cabaret, too, is well represented. Reuben Kaye returns in enGORGEd, his largest production yet; Dublin’s trailblazing THISISPOPBABY brings WAKE, a high-octane reinvention of the Irish wake; and New York’s Salty Brine melds The Smiths’ The Queen Is Dead with Frankenstein in Bigmouth Strikes Again. Natalie Abbott’s debut Bad Hand and Travis Alabanza’s acclaimed BURGERZ round out a strong lineup at Sydney Theatre Company’s Wharf 1 Theatre.

Opera and experimental forms also find space. Opera Australia teams with director Ann Yee for a bold new staging of Turandot at the Sydney Opera House, while guzheng virtuoso Mindy Meng Wang and sound designer Monica Lim present Opera for the Dead 祭歌, a multisensory meditation on mourning and transformation (read the Limelight review).

Canadian artists Patrick Blenkarn and Milton Lim offer asses.masses, a seven-hour, audience-played video-game-theatre hybrid featuring a herd of digital donkeys on a quest for justice — an irreverent blend of performance, satire and communal gameplay.

Summer School and the next generation

Alongside performance, Nelson’s debut festival invests heavily in ideas and participation. Curated by Artistic Associate Nithya Nagarajan, the new Summer School program will unfold across galleries, pools, alleys and even funeral homes, transforming the city into a “classroom for collective discovery”.

Highlights include Conflictorium, an interactive “museum of conflict” by an Indian artist collective at Carriageworks; and Life Rites Funerals x Queer PowerPoint’s Death by Powerpoint, a site-specific collaboration transforming a working funeral home into an exploration of death, identity and curiosity.

At McIver’s Ladies Baths, Tongan-Australian artist Latai Taumoepeau leads the Wansolmoana Lunar Assembly, a night of reflection and renewal celebrating feminine sovereignty.

Programs for younger audiences include Legs On The Wall’s inflatable-wave spectacle Waverider at Bondi Pavilion; The Censor, a provocative new play at ATYP giving children control of the narrative; and Irish company Branar’s Rothar, a whimsical story of friendship and imagination performed through bicycles.

For more information and bookings, visit sydneyfestival.org.au