Every year, Brisbane starts spring by splashing as much arts and culture into as many venues around the city as is humanly possible. While the likes of Vivid, Rising and Dark Mofo make winter their playground, Sydney Festival and Perth Festival shine in summer, and Adelaide Festival welcomes in autumn, Brisbane Festival blooms with the flowers, taking place this year from 4 to 26 September.
In Artistic Director Ebony Bott’s first stint at the helm, Queensland’s capital is set to ‘switch on, light up, come alive’, as per the event’s official theme for the year – an apt description for a festival filled with early-morning dance parties, joyous sing-alongs, sporting tributes, the magic of puppetry and celebrating life by remembering how fleeting it is.
If you can’t decide which Brisbane Festival shows, exhibitions and events to add to your calendar, we have suggestions. Here are 10 highlights from a jam-packed program.
Brisbane Festival 2026 highlights – quick links
(In)Sight
After winning both the Packer’s Prize and the Experimental Prize at the 2025 Brisbane Portrait Prize, Sri Lankan Australian multidisciplinary artist Kuweni Dias Mendis reteams with Grant x Wilkes (aka Claire Grant and Lee Wilkes) to explore optics in a different way.
With (In)Sight, the trio turn their attention to the mechanics behind seeing and being seen, as well as how images are made and interpreted, all in an immersive, multi-sensory installation.
Tackling an always-fascinating topic in a thought-provoking way, (In)Sight is part of the Night Moves series at Metro Arts, alongside exhibition Choral Cthonics, queer dance party SHANDY and Shaun Johnston’s masculinity-musing contemporary theatre and dance piece The Scramble.
(In)Sight is at Metro Arts from 27 August to 26 September.
Strong Is the New Pretty
World-premiering acclaimed Australian playwright’s Suzie Miller’s latest work, Strong Is the New Pretty sees Brisbane Festival kicking goals with a production about a lengthy and determined quest to kick goals.
Almost a decade after the first ball was bounced in the AFLW, Miller turns her attention to the competition’s origins with Strong Is the New Pretty. Sport might seem a change of pace for the talent behind Prima Facie, RBG: Of Many, One and Inter Alia, but this is the tale of women finally getting the opportunity to play Aussie Rules football professionally, in a code that solely heroed men at the highest level for over a century – so, the story of women banding together against patriarchal norms to chase a dream that long seemed unlikely.
As has long been a hallmark of Miller’s work, Strong Is the New Pretty speaks not just to one specific situation, but to a broader societal conversation.
Strong Is the New Pretty plays the Queensland Performing Arts Centre Playhouse from 1 to 19 September.
The Choir of Man
The Choir of Man delighted Edinburgh upon its 2017 debut, became an award-winner at Adelaide Fringe Festival, picked up an Olivier Award nomination for its West End season, wowed audiences in the US and Europe, and sold out Sydney Opera House. Next, Nic Doodson and Andrew Kay’s pub-set sensation is making its Queensland debut.
Whether focused on a specific singer, band or genre, or presenting an eclectic playlist, jukebox musicals share the feeling of hopping through a catalogue of hits with theatre audiences. The one thing that’s usually missing? Nodding to the place where jukeboxes tend to play their tunes. Not in this show.
Featuring a working bar as part of its set, this crowd-pleaser weaves tracks by Queen, Sia, Adele, Luther, Guns N’ Roses, Paul Simon and more into a rousing stage sing-along.
The Choir of Man plays Magic Mirrors Spiegeltent from 3 to 26 September.
No One Gets Out of Here Alive
With its title, The Farm’s new world-premiere doesn’t mince words, nor should it when death is in the spotlight. Life is finite. Every day that we exist brings us closer to our end. Western culture might prefer to shy away from those truths, but No One Gets Out of Here Alive embraces them.
A more dance-driven work than the Gold Coast performance company has staged of late, this production aims to balance facing mortality and its uncomfortable reality head on – the grim reaper even features – with celebrating and cherishing living.
In recognising that death is ever-present and inescapable, too, it also appreciates that it can apply to our hopes, dreams and beyond – and that nothing unites us more.
No One Gets Out of Here Alive plays the Thomas Dixon Centre from 9 to 12 September.
Daybreaker
An arts festival ticket typically means spending an evening in a theatre, performance tent or concert hall, not waking up before the sun. Brisbane was crowned the earliest-rising city in the world back in 2024, however, and Brisbane Festival is taking that to heart, hosting the Queensland premiere of early-morning dance party Daybreaker.
Combine the River City’s love of starting the day as soon as possible, the recent embrace of daytime clubbing and the hangover-free coffee-shop rave trend, and you have this opportunity to let loose to DJ sets in the sunshine on the banks of the Brisbane River.
At the global event’s first Brisbane stop after previously popping up in Sydney and Melbourne, the first hour of the wellness session-meets-dance festival is dedicated to yoga and fitness, while the second and third hours unleash the party.
Daybreaker takes place at the Brisbane Festival Village on 12 September.
Make, Believe, Magic: The Worlds of the Jim Henson Company
It’s time to play the music and light the lights, with the Gallery of Modern Art’s blockbuster exhibition celebrating the masterminds behind The Muppets – as well as Fraggle Rock, 80s cinema classics The Dark Crystal and Labyrinth, Australian sci-fi series Farscape and plenty more.
Kicking off within Brisbane Festival but running until April 2027, this Australian-exclusive showcase marks seven decades of The Jim Henson Company with a treasure trove of items from across the puppetry pioneers’ history. One certain highlight: a set from Fraggle Rock: Back to the Rock that attendees can walk through.
At GOMA’s Australian Cinematheque, projects made by The Jim Henson Company and featuring creatures crafted by Jim Henson’s Creature Shop will light up the big screen, alongside a program of films that explores puppetry elsewhere – in everything from Eraserhead and Jurassic Park to the work of Jan Švankmejer and 2025 box-office hit Project Hail Mary.
Make, Believe, Magic: The Worlds of the Jim Henson Company exhibits at the Gallery of Modern Art from 12 September 2026 to 18 April 2027.
Attenborough’s Ocean in Concert
To watch a David Attenborough documentary is to feel like you’ve stepped out of your everyday life and into nature’s glorious secrets. See one of the adored broadcaster’s films on the silver screen, with his sage narration echoing over pristine imagery of the natural world, and that sensation only grows.
When Ocean with David Attenborough released in cinemas in 2025, it unsurprisingly drew crowds, and became a box-office hit in Australia.
In returning the film to the big screen, Brisbane Festival’s two-night movie-and-music performance pairs the documentary with Camerata – Queensland’s Chamber Orchestra, playing the score composed by Gravity Oscar-winner Steven Price live.
Attenborough’s Ocean in Concert plays the Queensland Performing Arts Centre Concert Hall from 16 to 17 September.
Scorched Earth
Back in 2024, Luke Murphy’s Volcano was one of Brisbane Festival’s stage standouts. Two years later, the Irish artist returns with Scorched Earth, and with the writer, director and choreographer’s compelling blend of dance and theatre.
Where Volcano initially appeared to take place in a living room, Scorched Earth strides into an interrogation room to take on an unsolved murder case. Can a whodunnit play out in dance? It can in Murphy’s hands.
Adding to its ambitions, Scorched Earth also takes inspiration from John B Keane’s The Field, while examining the costs and complexities of land ownership – a topic as relevant in Australia’s history as it is in Ireland’s.
Scorched Earth plays Brisbane Powerhouse from 17 to 20 September.
Werewolf
A classic party game becomes a theatre experience – interactive, of course – with Werewolf, courtesy of New Zealand’s Binge Culture. Whether or not you’ve ever tried to pick which of your friends are howling at the moon and bumping off villagers, this immersive production promises to get audiences guessing, and also laughing.
Horror-comedy can be a deceptively tricky tonal mix, but Werewolf heads to Brisbane fresh from earning rave reviews at Edinburgh Fringe, to make its Australian premiere.
Attendees can expect to be transported to a shelter, under the watch of three wardens, as a lycanthropy outbreak takes over and tensions start rising.
Werewolf plays Brisbane Powerhouse from 23 to 26 September.
Dead as a Dodo
Mortality and puppetry, two major themes at this year’s Brisbane Festival, combine in Wakka Wakka’s Dead as a Dodo. Enjoying its debut Australian run after seasons in Norway, the US, South Korea, France, Portugal, Italy, Taiwan and Sweden, this family-friendly performance digs into a life-and-death battle via a puppet musical about two skeleton friends: a boy and a dodo.
With its subject matter and story, as well as the show’s gorgeous creature and production design – pairing its skeletons with glitter and projections – it’s no wonder that Dead as a Dodo has earned comparisons to both Pixar and Tim Burton.
This is inventive, heartfelt and big-thinking puppetry for all ages – adults and children alike.
Dead as a Dodo plays Brisbane Powerhouse from 23 to 26 September.
