Illuminate Adelaide reveals its 2026 program

This year's Illuminate Adelaide festival features a larger-than-life video game, a radiant woolly mammoth and even a smartphone choir.
Moment Factory's larger-than-life video games experience Augmented Games has been programmed for Illuminate Adelaide 2026. People watch on from the sides as participants step onto the boards of immersive, large-scale video games.

Illuminate Adelaide, the South Australian capital’s winter festival, has unveiled its 2026 program.

‘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.’

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.

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Richard Watts OAM is ArtsHub's former National Performing Arts Editor; he also presents the weekly program SmartArts on Three Triple R FM. Richard is a life member of the Melbourne Queer Film Festival, a Melbourne Fringe Festival Living Legend, and was awarded the 2019 Sidney Myer Performing Arts Awards' Facilitator's Prize in early 2020. He received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Green Room Awards Association in 2021, and a Medal of the Order of Australia (OAM) in June 2024. Photo: Fiona Hamilton. Follow Richard on Bluesky @richardthewatts.bsky.social and Instagram @richard.l.watts