LAVA Arts Festival Is Bringing A Brand-New Celebration Of Contemporary Arts To The Tweed This June

Northern NSW is about to get an exciting new cultural event—a three-day multidisciplinary program of visual art, performance, sound and ideas, and it's entirely free. LAVA Arts Festival makes its debut in The Tweed from Friday 26 to Sunday 28 June 2026.

Produced by Creative Caldera Incorporated, a dedicated group of local artists and arts professionals with deep roots in The Tweed's community, LAVA is built to be wandered, with a program that spills out of gallery walls and into streets, halls and hidden corners across the region.

Organisers are already eyeing a biennial future for the festival, with ambitions to grow it into a long-term platform for next-generation creatives. For Gold Coasters, it's an easy excuse for a weekend escape into some of the most quietly thriving arts country in the region.

Image Credit: LAVA Arts Festival | Supplied

LAVA Arts Festival 2026 Highlights

• LAVA Opening: The festival kicks off at Murwillumbah's historic Regent Theatre, with the ground floor taken over by TAFE NSW graduates, a youth art exhibition and open studios, while upstairs screens a curated selection of film and video works. Friday 26 June, 5pm, The Regent Theatre

• Field Walk by The Mound Collective: Opening night also sees The Mound activate the M-Arts Precinct with a site-responsive movement work rooted in the ritual of slow, devotional walking. Developed through daily five-minute walks oriented toward Wollumbin, Field Walk unfolds through bodies in space, light and material. Friday 26 June, 5pm until late, M-Arts Precinct

• We Respect, We Connect, We Dance, We Belong by Kinship Doobai Dancers: Kinship Doobai Dancers—an Aboriginal women- and girls-led collective spanning Tweed and Byron Shires—invite audiences to join a participatory dance workshop and performance that connects deeply with Country, kinship and spirit through movement. Saturday 27 June, 1pm–sunset, Pottsville Community Hall and Pottsville Beach Estuary

• Sounding the Farm by Zemzemeh: Sound artists Siyavash Doostkhah and Greta Kelly have spent time recording farms across the Tweed and, at The Citadel, those recordings are transformed through spatial audio, looping, live Persian instruments and electro-acoustic processing into an immersive listening environment where audiences are invited to sit and let the familiar dissolve into something musical and strange. Sunday 28 June, sessions at 2pm and 4pm, The Citadel, Murwillumbah

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Main Image Credit: LAVA Arts Festival | Supplied