Your September calendar has just filled up because Brisbane Festival has unveiled its jaw-dropping 2025 program, where our humble River City will be the stage for a dynamic celebration of art, culture and community.
From 5 to 27 September, Brisbane Festival will bring together 2,260 artists across 106 productions and 1,069 performances (including 21 world premieres). Not one for the numbers? All you need to know is the blockbuster agenda is full of show-stopping reasons to hit the town, with almost half the program completely free to the public.
“This year’s program is a love letter to Brisbane—bold, joyful and created with and for the city,” said Artistic Director Louise Bezzina, who has pulled together her sixth and final festival this year. “My final festival is a celebration of everything Brisbane Festival has become: a world-class event with a fiercely local heart. From world premieres to deeply resonant community works, this year’s program is ambitious in scale and grounded in storytelling, deeply connected to the people and places that make this city so special. As the city comes alive this September, I welcome everyone to take their place in the story.”
Image credit: Afterglow | Mellumae and Sean Dowling
So what’s on the agenda? Three of Brisbane’s most prominent pedestrian bridges will transform into vibrant, large-scale, and kaleidoscopic exhibitions with ANZ’s Walk This Way by globally renowned visionaries Craig & Karl. Brisbane’s riverbank will play host to Baleen Moondjan— a floating performance within towering sculptural whale bones by First Nations artist Stephen Page in a breathtaking blend of song, dance and tradition. Afterglow will invite you to explore the City Botanic Gardens after-dark, through a dreamscape of fire sculptures, candlelit artworks, and live performances. And, of course, Riverfire will light up the skyline for Brisbane Festival’s opening weekend with drone show Skylore—Nieergoo: Spirit of the Whale also returning by popular demand to tell the story of Brisbane’s First Nations people in the stars.
Image credit: Skylore | JD Lin
Brisbane’s theatres will also be getting the world-class treatment with unmissable global premieres and performances certainly worth nabbing a ticket. There’s a pop-fuelled retelling of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream in The Lovers, a joyful and sequin-filled tribute to Tina Turner with TINA—A Tropical Love Story by First Nations drag icon Miss Ellaneous (Ben Graetz), and even Brisbane’s iconic Twelfth Night Theatre will be reawakened for this year’s festival to host Gatsby at the Green Light—a luminous night of cabaret, following a sold-out season at the Sydney Opera House.
Image credit: Gatsby at the Green Light | Prudence Upton
Music lovers will get around the 360-degree stage for Tivoli in the Round, which is set to blur the lines between the audience and performers in an epic line-up of genre-bending performers. Plus, Night at the Parkland is set to bring some of Australia’s biggest names to the heart of the city for an outdoor concert beneath the stars—think Lime Cordiale, Amy Shark, ICEHOUSE, and more.
Tickets for Brisbane Festival performances are out now, so get amongst Australia’s largest international arts festival by securing yours here.
The Details
When: 5 to 27 September 2025
Where: Various locations in Brisbane
Find out more here.
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Main image credit: Brisbane Festival | Jared Hinz