SYDNEY FESTIVAL 2027 TURNS UP THE HEAT WITH HANNAH GADSBY, ONEFOUR, CARS TRANSFORMED INTO POOLS AND $49 PRIME SEATS
Global dance and theatre, a massive free late-night party in The Cutaway and the return of an outdoor festival hub lead a program spanning Greater Sydney
Sydney Festival today unveils its dynamic 2027 program, bringing the world’s most visionary dancemakers, major First Nations premieres and a new harbourside playground to the city from 7–25 January. From comedy legend Hannah Gadsby’s return and ILBIJERRI Theatre Company’s world premiere of THE LINE, to Sydney hip hop icons ONEFOUR performing with the Penrith Chamber Orchestra, high-wire ballet at The Cutaway and cars converted into plunge pools, hot tubs and saunas at Barangaroo Reserve, Sydney’s summer is set for extraordinary encounters—on stage, outdoors and in the water.
Stretching from the CBD to Bondi and into the outer West, Sydney Festival unfolds across Greater Sydney this January. First Nations-led Blak Out brings Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander artists and stories to the fore through theatre, dance, music and visual art. Free family performances and large-scale interactive works give audiences room to make, play and explore, while Summer School takes them closer to the artists’ ideas through ritual, workshops, talks and cooking demonstrations.
Sydney Festival’s $49 ticket program is back, with more than 10,000 tickets available for $49 or less available across every event in the ticketed program. From internationally acclaimed theatre to the Festival’s monumental dance program, audiences can experience an extraordinary summer of art from some of the best seats in the house for under $50.
“We want everyone to feel that this Festival belongs to them, and that means making great seats part of the offer,” says Sydney Festival Director, Kris Nelson. “With terrific seats available for $49 or under at every performance of every ticketed show, we’re giving audiences more freedom to take a chance on an unfamiliar artist, try a different artform or bring a friend. Alongside The Yard and free performances across the city, this opens up more ways for people to experience the Festival and make it their own.”
“We’ve set out to make a Festival that feels unmistakably of Sydney and open to the world,” Nelson continues, “We have major new First Nations shows, collaborations born in Western Sydney, and an international dance and theatre program on a scale the city deserves. It means turning The Cutaway into a house of dance and bringing an outdoor Festival hub back to Barangaroo. With programming from Penrith to Bondi and a beating heart at Barangaroo, it’s a festival to cross town for. This is a line-up full of surprises. It’s a festival that transforms ordinary city locations into places for fun and joy. It’s a festival full of artists with complex stories and engaging wits and it’s a chance to encounter some of the world’s most incredible dances – a true feast for the eye and the soul. It’s a summer festival calling out to you to feel invigorated and alive in your city – how will you answer?”
Minister for Planning and Public Spaces, Paul Scully said “From major performances to a free all-night dance party, Sydney Festival will showcase the extraordinary potential of The Cutaway and demonstrate the impact of the Minns Labor Government’s vibrancy reforms, creating new ways for people to experience our city, connect with culture and enjoy Sydney after dark.”
“As one of Australia’s premier cultural events, Sydney Festival attracts visitors, supports local jobs and businesses and reinforces NSW’s reputation as a global destination for arts, culture and entertainment,” Scully continues.
FESTIVAL HIGHLIGHTS
On Stargazer Lawn at Barangaroo Reserve, waynapuni pools remakes old cars as a public art park for bathing and gathering. Participatory artist and industrial designer Benjamin Paul works with local and Palawa teen artists to weld junkyard scrapheaps into bathhouses, saunas and steam baths. Cold-plunge Commodores and hot-spring Falcons become places of reprieve, community and care in a healing ceremony held by future leaders.
Around the pools, The Yard marks the much-anticipated return of an outdoor festival hub to Sydney Festival. Free to enter at Barangaroo Reserve from 8–24 January, this harbourside gathering place brings together pop-up restaurants, art and the simple pleasure of spending time by the water. Meet friends before a show, settle in afterwards, or make an afternoon of exploring the Festival before the evening begins. With room to eat, wander and linger, The Yard requires no ticket, no timetable, just the desire to meet, mingle and soak in the festival atmosphere by harbour.
The Australian icon who rewrote the rules of comedy, Hannah Gadsby, returns to Sydney with a new show at Roslyn Packer Theatre. The Emmy, Peabody and three-time AACTA Award winner takes on the idea of a personal foundation myth: the defining moments that rarely announce themselves as they happen and only come into focus with hindsight. Bringing their quick wit and gift for an unexpected perspective, Gadsby finds comedy in the distance between living through something and finally understanding it.
When a soldier shoots a deaf boy who cannot hear his orders, the people of an occupied town become deaf the next day. That startling turn sets Deaf Republic in motion. Irish theatre vanguards Dead Centreand Zoë McWhinney transform Jewish-Ukrainian poet Ilya Kaminsky’s lyric poems into a tense drama about grief, solidarity and resistance. Performed through a mix of spoken English, AUSLAN, and Creative Captioning, Deaf Republic comes to Roslyn Packer Theatre for an Australian-exclusive season for Sydney Festival following celebrated seasons in New York, Dublin and London.
In a world premiere season, Sydney Festival and the Sydney Opera House will co-present ILBIJERRI Theatre Company‘s THE LINE, a darkly comic reckoning with the legacy of the 1830 military operation known as the Black Line. As soldiers and settlers advance across Lutruwita/Tasmania to displace Palawa people, widowed settler Jane and her Palawa servant Muka find their volatile relationship pushed to its limits. Written by the award-winning Trawlwoolway and Palawa playwright Nathan Maynard, and co-directed by Maynard and legendary theatre maker Dr Rachael Maza AM, the work leaps across time, Country and form, tracing the violence of the Frontier Wars from the past into the present.
A major centrepiece of the Festival, Dance Reflections by Van Cleef & Arpels brings leading choreographers and contemporary dance companies from all corners of the globe to Sydney, from French collective (LA)HORDE and China’s TAO Dance Theater to Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker and Radouan Mriziga. The redeveloped Cutaway will host Festival performances for the first time, with its vast interior becoming a setting for Rachid Ouramdane’s ballet on tightrope, Outsider. Alongside these international works, Australia’s leading Indigenous intercultural dance and theatre company Marrugeku shares the world premiere of Ngurragabu, drawing audiences into a monumental petrified mangrove forest.
Celebrating the festival’s opening weekend, The Party takes over The Cutaway on 8 January for a massive free dance party extravaganza. Bringing together Sydney’s party starters, scenes and crews, the after-hours gathering promises DJs, surprise performances and spontaneous encounters, with room to dance, explore and stay into the early hours.
Filipino artist Leeroy New joins BANG-ON Collective and Blacktown communities for the world premiere of Future Fiestas at Darling Harbour, co-presented with Blacktown Arts. New’s extraordinary costumes begin with discarded plastics, turning the materials of everyday life into a vision of a different future. Hands-on workshops let families make wearable art from cast-offs before the work spills into a public parade and celebrates the heroes of Sydney’s Filipino community.
And in Penrith over the festival’s final days, two different sounds of Western Sydney meet on stage for the first time. Local hip hop icons ONEFOUR and the Penrith Chamber Orchestra come together at The Joan Sutherland Performing Arts Centre in a major new commission, with Penrith Performing & Visual Arts, pairing the drill collective with a full string section on home turf.
Sydney Festival runs 7–25 January 2027.
Selected exhibitions extend beyond these dates.
Tickets on sale Thursday 22 October.
Limited prime seats priced at $49 will be available across all ticketed shows.
The Yard is free to enter and runs 8–24 January at Barangaroo Reserve. Individual experiences may have separate booking requirements.
Full program and bookings at www.sydneyfestival.org.au
