Awesome Black
Events
November 11, 2026
Every year at the height of summer, Sydney Festival roars to life – eclectic, expansive, and overflowing with fantastic art and experiences for audiences to encounter. The 2027 edition sports international dance heavyweights, major First Nations premieres, a new harbourside festival hub and some unconventional ways to cool off.
Running from 7–25 January, Sydney Festival will stretch from the CBD to Bondi and Western Sydney, bringing together theatre, music, comedy, visual art and large-scale outdoor spectacles.
Deeply connected to people and place, Sydney Festival champions First Nations leadership and ensures that the oldest storytelling culture always forms the heart of their program. Below, you'll find a shortlist of the events we think Mob will love.
Want to see what else is happening during Sydney Festival? Check out the full program here.
MOB TIXDiscounted Mob Tix are also on offer, meaning Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people can access tickets to any event that hasn't sold out for $36. Use promo code MOBTIXSF27 when booking tickets here.
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🗓️ Thursday 14 Jan, 7:30pm, and Friday 15 Jan, 8:30pm
📍 The Metro Theatre, 624 George St
🎫 Tickets here
One of this country’s most powerful voices, MO’JU is a self-described First Nations (Wiradyuri), Second generation (Filipinx), Third gender, Third culture kid. Their music combines funk, neo-soul, R&B and pop, with a fiercely idiosyncratic streak. Their fourth studio album, Oro, Plata, Mata, was released in 2023 to rapturous reviews, including the electrifying centrepiece track, 'Change Has to Come'. That same year, they staged a career-defining show with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, later released as an album which has just been nominated in the 2026 ARIA Awards.
Now MO’JU turns their attention to one of the Blues most enduring songwriters. Expect 'Ain’t No Sunshine', 'Use Me', 'Lean On Me' and more, recast in MO’JU’s singular style. It’s a meeting of two generations of soul: Bill Withers’ timeless songwriting refracted through one of Australia’s most distinctive contemporary voices.
🗓️ Saturday 16 Jan, 6pm, and Sunday 17 Jan, 8:30pm
📍 The Metro Theatre, 624 George St
🎫 Tickets here
This is a good time to be Budjerah. A Coodjinburra man from the Bundjalung nation, he recently released his much-awaited debut album, Gentleman, featuring the instant earworms 'Want You Back' and 'Even At My Worst'.
With John Farnham and Beyoncé among his inspirations, his music is a warm, familiar embrace, underpinned by a remarkably melodic voice. Here he takes on the titanic songs of soul great Donny Hathaway.
In this special performance, Budjerah will move between his own songs and Hathaway’s catalogue, including 'A Song for You', 'The Closer I Get To You' and 'To Be Young, Gifted and Black'. Across generations, the two artists are united by a love of soul, honesty and irresistible groove – a chance for Budjerah to honour an icon while exploring the musical lineage that runs through his own sound.
🗓️ Sunday 17 Jan, 6pm
📍 The Metro Theatre, 624 George St
🎫 Tickets here
Brisbane-based multidisciplinary artist SOLCHLD is a true original. Her music – including the 2026 album, Scarred And Sacred, made with the Callum Pask Trio – moves between spoken poetry, jazz and deep soul, carrying equal parts tenderness and force. Her connection to First Nations traditions runs through everything she makes, whether she’s speaking truth to power or gently serenading.
As part of Sydney Festival’s new Blues club, SOLCHLD covers Etta James, the R&B and soul trailblazer whose songs hold devastating heartache, tenderness, and dauntless strength with equal ease. At this special performance, she brings her singular voice to James’ catalogue, moving from aching ballads to genre-defining standards. It’s a celebration of an artist who could turn vulnerability into power, and a fresh encounter with one of soul’s most beloved songbooks.
🗓️ 21 – 24 Jan, times here
📍 Sydney Opera House, Drama Theatre, Bennelong Point, Sydney
🎫 Tickets here
On October 7th, 1830, more than 2,200 soldiers and settlers reported to seven pre-arranged locations across “Van Diemen’s” land to execute the largest domestic military operation in Australian history. The plan – to form a human chain across the entire island, advancing gradually to forcefully displace Palawa people – later became known as ‘The Black Line’. In this major new work, award-winning Trawlwoolway and Palawa playwright Nathan Maynard shines an unflinching light on the violence that stretches from the Frontier Wars through to the present.
As ‘The Black Line’ cuts across the country, widowed settler Jane and her Palawa servant Muka find themselves in the eye of the storm brewing around them. Living on a remote property, their volatile yet symbiotic relationship will be pushed to extremes. While anchored in the past, Maynard’s propulsive and ambitious show is far from a simple period piece: it leaps and loops across time, Country and form.
Prepare for a journey that is at once playful, devastating and transformational. Co-directed by Maynard and Dr Rachael Maza AM, THE LINE weaves immense historical and contemporary weight into a work of deft, defiant drama. The Line is anything but straight.
🗓️ Monday, 25 Jan, 6pm
📍 Redfern Park, Redfern, Sydney
🎫 Free
Vigil has been a fixture in the Sydney Festival program since 2019. The first Vigil was an overnight vigil starting at dusk and running until dawn by the fireside. There were stories and songs shared from elders, and reflections on the impact of colonisation.
Evolving in formats over the years under the custodianship of different artists, it remains a platform for First Nations voices, an opportunity to come together through song and ceremony, and a way to diffuse and process the tension in the lead up to 26 January.
Vigil will move to Redfern in partnership with Moogahlin Performing Arts, continuing to evolve through ongoing conversations with First Nations leaders and community members. In a place of profound cultural, historical and political significance for Aboriginal people, Vigil will continue its legacy of remembrance, reflection and truth-telling.
🗓️ 12 – 24 Jan, times here
📍 Barangaroo Reserve, Stargazer's Lawn, Hickson Road, Barangaroo
🎫 Tickets here
High up on Stargazer Lawn sits what looks like a typical wrecking yard of junk cars, with one key difference: you can swim in them. Led by Palawa youth in conjunction with participatory artist and industrial designer Benjamin Paul, a group of local First Nations teenagers have turned wrecked metal into vehicles of reprieve, community and care.
Old Falcons and Commodores, once dirty icons of speed and combustion have become wood-burning saunas, hot pools and cold plunges. A workshop series, public exhibition, and large-scale healing ritual all at once, waynapuni pools came into being over nine months in Lutruwita/Tasmania as Palawa youth learned practical design, fabrication, and metalworking skills as well as connecting to culture through ceremony. Now this Mob cross the water as leaders, sharing what they've learned with their peers on Gadigal Country.
This is a youth-led and built space turning engines to water, metal to breath, wreckage to ritual. Wander the installation for free as an art park or take the plunge in a (literally) immersive ceremony facilitated by young Mob, artists, Country, and community. Bring your swimmers and your towel for an experience unlike any other."waynapuni" (why-nah-pu-nee) means “smoke” in palawa kani, the language of Lutruwita/Tasmania.
🗓️ 20 – 23 Jan, times here
📍 Carriageworks, Bay 20, 245 Wilson Street, Eveleigh
🎫 Tickets here
A great human howl for the damage done to earth, this world premiere from acclaimed dance theatre company Marrugeku brings a haunting speculative future to life.
Envisioned in dialogue with Yawuru and Bardi custodians, choreographer Dalisa Pigram and director Rachel Swain’s latest work draws on a powerhouse ensemble of Indigenous and settler-diasporic performers from Australia, South East Asia and Melanesia to question the cost of survival.
Set in a time of great middens and drowned Country, Ngurragabu [from the last night/next/tomorrow] catapults audiences into visual artist Abdul-Rahman Abdullah’s monumental petrified mangrove forest, inspired by past-future archipelagos connecting northern Australia to east Indonesia.
Techno-futurist music, immersive projections and a stunning set create a world unlike any other, where every movement asks how we might live differently with one another – and with the planet.
Urgent without losing hope, Ngurragabu rewilds the future as a place of radical possibility.
Awesome Black is a Media Partner of Sydney Festival.
By Awesome Black staff
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