Illuminate Adelaide, the South Australian capital’s winter festival, has unveiled its 2026 program.
Highlights include Canadian company Moment Factory’s Augmented Games at Adelaide Showgrounds, a larger-than-life digital gaming experience in which participants step into the games as players rather than wielding controllers from the sidelines; Digital Abyss at Immersive Light and Arts, a new work bringing underwater ecosystems to life and created by French digital artist Miguel Chevalier, Illuminate Adelaide’s 2026 artist-in-residence; and the third and final chapter of Adelaide Zoo’s night-time exploration of prehistoric worlds, Universal Kingdom: Ice Age, featuring illuminated mammoths, sabre-toothed tigers and their Australian megafauna equivalents such as diprotodon.
Elsewhere, several festival favourites are returning. The free program City Lights features more than 50 interactive artworks, roving performances and dynamic projections from around the world, which will be installed across the Adelaide CBD and this year extend into Rymill Park. Night Visions, an artistic takeover of Adelaide Botanic Garden, and not one but two music festivals, Unsound Adelaide and Supersonic, will also be back for 2026.
Illuminate Adelaide gears up for 2026 – quick links
Illuminate Adelaide’s impressive growth
In a joint statement, Illuminate Adelaide Co-Founders and Creative Directors Lee Cumberlidge and Rachael Azzopardi said: ‘We are excited to deliver this, our sixth fully curated program, and we are immensely proud to deliver both ticketed and free experiences that invite the public to explore, play and interact with the work of some of the world’s most exciting artists and creative studios all pushing the boundaries of creativity and technology.’
South Australian Minister for Tourism, Hon Emily Bourke MP said: ‘Illuminate Adelaide continues to shine in our non-stop events calendar and has launched into the ranks of Australia’s fastest-growing festivals.
‘Last year we saw the winter staple triple its annual total attendance since its inception and deliver a record $74.7 million boost to our state, with hotel rooms packed across the city.
‘This year’s program is set to again draw huge crowds and I can’t wait for South Australians – and tens of thousands of interstate and overseas visitors – to come and experience world-class artists and support our local businesses.’
Gearing up for Illuminate Adelaide 2026
Additional drawcards for Illuminate Adelaide this year include the festival-within-a-festival, Unsound Adelaide, which takes place from 10 to 11 July across three venues. First held in Krakow, Poland in 2003, it’s renowned for showcasing and celebrating experimental, alternative and avant-garde musicians and their practices.
This year’s Unsound features New York-based experimental rapper billy woods, whose most recent album Golliwog was described by Pitchfork as ‘a twisty horrorcore masterpiece’; Concrète Waves, a collaboration between five-time Grammy award-nominated US composer Suzanne Ciani and influential British contemporary electronic producer Darren J Cunningham (aka Actress) and a sonic juxtaposition of the natural and industrial worlds; classically trained Polish electronic artist Hania Rani’s alter-ego Chilling Bambino; and Japanese sound artist FUJIIIIIIIIIIITA performing with New York composer Ka Baird.
Supersonic – introduced to the Illuminate Adelaide program in 2025 – returns to the West End in a new format this year. Taking over Hindley Street Music Hall for one night only, the club iteration of Supersonic is curated by Motez, an Iraqi-Australian producer, musician, installation artist and DJ, and headlined by South Sudanese DJ Skin On Skin.
Reviving the lost art of listening
Elsewhere, Illuminate Adelaide highlights the need for deep listening – to each other and the world – with a new project several years in development. Co-presented with Port Adelaide company Vitalstatistix, and originally developed through Vitals’ Adhocracy program in 2016, The Lost Art of Listening reverses the usually isolated and atomised smartphone experience by bringing people and their smartphones together.
Presenting a new composition by lead artist Hilary Kleinig played live by pianist Erik Griswold on a prepared piano, The Lost Art of Listening also features a choir of smartphones – the audience’s own devices, via a specially created and downloaded app – playing an experimental soundscape that blends field recordings, vintage synths and the sounds of wind and rain.
