It’s that time of year again! The 48th annual Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras is gearing up to paint the town rainbow. But between the vicious and relentless in-fighting going on with the Sydney Mardi Gras board and the 11th-hour cancellation of the official parade after-party, you might be feeling like the sparkle is fading on the festivities.
Counterpoint – screw that! If you really want to reclaim the queer spirit of Sydney Mardi Gras, it’s time to get out of the house and into the foyers. The 17-day festival of LGBTQIA+ arts and culture kicks off a couple of weeks before this year’s Parade sashays down Oxford Street on 28 February.
Both within and beyond the official program, mainstage theatre companies and grass-roots indie collectives are putting queer stories in the spotlight this month.
Heed the advice of this card-carrying Sydney Arts Queer: kick off your Mardi Gras at Fair Day, where you can bask in community (and avoid eye contact with your exes), get on a dancefloor at least once, follow Progress Shark for all the hot takes and local queer goss, and lock some of the queer culture highlights from the curated list below into your calendar.
Sydney Mardi Gras highlights – quick links
Queer theatre, comedy and performative acts
The Normal Heart
Mitchell Butel is coming out swinging with his first show as Artistic Director of Sydney Theatre Company, presenting a brand new production of Larry Kramer’s ground-breaking Tony and Olivier Award-winning masterpiece The Normal Heart, which opens at Sydney Opera House almost 40 years after its Australian premiere with STC.
Set in New York in the 1980s at the height of the emerging AIDS crisis, the play remains one of the most powerful and urgent works of contemporary theatre, tracing the early years of the epidemic and the activists who fought to be heard. Butel will be treading the boards, joining an all-star cast led by award-winning writer and director Dean Bryant (Hubris & Humiliation, Dear Evan Hansen).
FYI: STC is also hosting special events for Sydney Mardi Gras, including a Queer Night performance of The Normal Heart with a post-show panel (17 February) as well as Queer Backstage Tours of STC’s home at Wharf 4/5 in the Walsh Bay Arts Precinct, providing exclusive behind-the-scenes access to queer theatrical memories from the 1980s to now (19 and 26 February).
The Normal Heart plays at the Sydney Opera House Drama Theatre from 9 February to 14 March.
Mardi Gras shows at Qtopia Sydney
Darlinghurst’s hub of LGBTQIA+ history and culture is rolling out the red carpet and rolling with the Mardi Gras energy, with a crop of intimate theatre spaces hosting eclectic queer performances. Whether it’s camp cabaret, original musical theatre, form-defying opera, drag, comedy, burlesque or heartfelt drama you’re after, this Mardi Gras there’s a show for you at Qtopia Sydney.
Our top picks bring badass women to the front: Strip The Life Fantastic, a one-woman revolution from striptease legend Imogen Kelly (crowned World Queen of Burlesque 2012); the wet and wild return of Cleo Rapture’s Piss Be With You (winner of Best in Interactive & Immersive at Sydney Fringe 2025); and Possession, an electrifying one-woman operatic odyssey that brings to life three legendary queer historical figures starring mezzo soprano Ruth Strutt.
The Qtopia program runs from 10 to 27 February.
Big Gay Entrée
Hungry for some queer entertaintment? A gaggle of extravagant exhibitionists from Sydney and afar are getting together at Marrickville’s Factory Theatre for this bite-size arts festival celebrating the best queer comedy, theatre, drag and cabaret over four fabulous nights. You can fill your plate with hilarious breakdowns, gorgeous drag performers and have Etsy witches hex your ex live on stage.
Highlights include comedian Scout Boxall‘s darkly funny retelling of a mental marathon through manic withdrawal, a special encore of Drag Race Down Under star Karen from Finance’s Out of Office, Thalia Joan’s ode to the messy Sydney nightlife of yesteryear, and Joshy in Paris, the personal tale of a gay Aussie guy trying to make it as a creative superstar in the piss-ridden streets of Paris.
Big Gay Entree is at Factory Theatre, Marrickville from 18 to 22 February.
The Elocution of Benjamin Franklin
Fifty years on, this landmark work of Australian theatre, a riotous tragi-comedy, returns to the stage where it first sprung to life. Steered by Griffin Theatre Co’s Artistic Director Declan Greene (Naturism, The Lewis Trilogy), legendary actor Simon Burke takes on the infamous role of Robert O’Brien, a suspiciously flamboyant elocution teacher whose career is going nowhere fast.
The Elocution of Benjamin Franklin is at Belvoir St Theatre, Surry Hills from 21 February to 29 March.
Perfect Arrangement
An indie gem, Newtown’s New Theatre always gets into the Mardi Gras spirit by putting bombastic queer drama in the spotlight. This year is no exception, and they’re keeping the tradition strong with this madcap classic inspired by the true story of the earliest stirrings of the American gay rights movement, where sitcom-style laughs give way to provocative drama as two ‘all-American’ couples are forced to stare down the closet door.
Perfect Arrangement plays at New Theatre, Newtown from 4 February to March 7.
Sistren (Griffin Theatre Company x Green Door Theatre Co)
Okay, this season technically starts just over a month after the official Mardi Gras Festival wraps up, but any self-respecting, theatre-loving girls, gays and theys will not want to miss the return of this indie smash-hit! Following its sold-out premiere in 2025 and fresh from cleaning up at the Sydney Theatre Awards, Sistren lands at Belvoir’s Downstairs Theatre for an encore.
Equal parts chaotic, heart-warming and hilarious, Sistren is the story of two teenage outcasts and self-proclaimed soulmates, Isla the ‘Caribbean diva’ (played by the show’s writer, Iolanthe) and her ‘Ethel Cain adjacent’ transgender bestie, Violet (the inimitable Janet Anderson). This dynamic duo reckons they’re inseparable, but their self-righteous headmaster reckons they’re a problem.
Sistren play at the Belvoir St Theatre, Surry Hills from 9 April to 3 May.
Ballroom blitzes
Black Cherry
Black Cherry makes its Mardi Gras debut as an immersive party experience that spotlights BIPOC trans talent across sound, movement and embodied expression. Rooted in redemption, transformation and rebirth, this adults-only event is produced by Mother Kianna Louboutin Oricci, who describes it as ‘a journey of healing through music, performance art and community whilst feeling sexy’.
Taking over the National Art School courtyard and the historic Cell Block Theatre, Black Cherry features performances by Ballroom Australia, Basjia, Fetu Taku and Lay Juicy-Couture alongside DJ sets from Neesha Alexander, Stevzar and Soju Gang.
Black Cherry is at the National Art School, Darlinghurst on 14 February.
Sissy Ball
The Southern Hemisphere’s biggest vogue ball is back, and this year it brings the sweat and spectacle to the stunning Marrickville Town Hall for the first time, as Ballroom Australia teams up with Inner West Council.
Sissy Ball has been a beacon for the down under ballroom community since Benji Ra, the legendary Mother of Australian Ballroom, brought it to the Mardi Gras program in 2018. The Ball’s continuing curator, Mother Kianna Louboutin Oricci, is growing on that legacy, centring trans and POC cultural and political art.
Sissy Ball: The Warm Up is at Marrickville Town Hall, Marrickville on 27 February.
Gays on film
Mardi Gras Film Festival
Can you smell the popcorn? Queer Screen has pulled together a bumper two-week program of queer coded cinema for the 33rd Mardi Gras Film Festival – with 139 films from 38 countries playing across multiple venues, including six world premieres.
The Opening Night feature is Australian director Sophie Hyde’s Jimpa, a sweet intergenerational queer drama starring Olivia Colman, John Lithgow and Aud Mason-Hyde. (Jimpa also features a cheeky song performed by Sydney’s own queer pop prince, Brendan Maclean!) Meanwhile, coming-of-age comedy She’s the He is the hero on closing night.
Read: Top 10 LGBTQIA+ series and films to watch out for in 2026
You can also get your motor running with Pillion, the much-hyped new erotic drama starring Alexander Skarsgård as a dominant biker who takes a timid new submissive (Harry Melling) under his wing, along with Kristen Stewart’s directorial debut, The Chronology of Water, starring Imogen Poots (28 Days Later) and adapted from Lidia Yuknavitch’s best-selling memoir.
The Mardi Gras Film Festival runs across multiple Sydney venues from 12 to 26 February.
Queer art and exhibitionism
LOVING: Photographs of Men in Love, 1850s-1950s
While you’re visiting Qtopia Sydney for a theatrical act, make sure you take the time to peruse the exhibitions that defiantly fill the former Darlinghurst Police Station and surrounds where this world-first museum makes its home.
A highlight is the brand new show LOVING: Photographs of Men in Love, 1850s-1950s, which draws from an extraordinary private collection of more than 4000 images scoured from flea markets, auction houses, family albums and online collections across the globe.
LOVING: Photographs of Men in Love, 1850s-1950s is at 301 Forbes St, Sydney from 5 February. The museum is open from 10.30am to 4.30pm, Wednesday to Sunday. (Hot tips: entry is free on Sundays, and ticketholders can also peruse before theatre shows in the evening.)
Queer Contemporary
The National Art School in Darlinghurst always leans into the Sydney Mardi Gras spirit with their annual Queer Contemporary program, and as they should! This year’s program centres on an exhibition from NAS alum Liz Bradshaw, I didn’t expect to live this long.
Featuring large-scale sculpture and installation works, Bradshaw’s exhibition offers a personal and political queering of time, space and materiality. Presenting new works alongside a fragment of an artwork created at NAS in the 1990s, the installation folds together the artist’s personal experiences with the complex histories of the NAS site and the broader Darlinghurst area, which served as an epicentre of Australian queer history.
Bradshaw’s I didn’t expect to live this long is presented alongside student exhibitions organised by Jack Oliver Owen and nikita lelu.
Queer Contemporary is at the National Art School, Darlinghurst from 13 February to 7 March. Entry is free.
In Full Bloom 2.0
Following the success of last year’s tiny-yet-mighty exhibition of the same name, Inner West artists Claire Cassidy (aka @studioflos) and Emma Rowland (@rowland_studio) are thrilled to present In Full Bloom 2.0 – A Queer Art Exhibition at Chrissie Cotter Gallery in Camperdown.
This is your chance to get familiar with the work of more than 30 local LGBTQIA+ artists in a celebration of queer identities and the joy of living authentically. You can also peruse ‘Queer Mart’ while you’re there, a curated selection of queer-made art objects and cute things that can be yours for less than $50.
The opening night of In Full Bloom 2.0 – A Queer Art Exhibition is on 19 February. The exhibition continues at Chrissie Cotter Gallery, Camperdown until 1 March.
