The 2025 Sydney Festival is Set To Astound, Amaze, and Delight

From 4-26 January 2025, the 49th Sydney Festival will feature 130 events, 22 world premieres, a wide offering of Australian exclusives and over 50 free events. 

Besides events being held across the city, they will also be lighting up areas such as Manly, Bankstown, Blacktown and Parramatta.

The January events will also mark the final festival for director Olivia Ansell before she heads to Luminato Toronto.

As in other years the Sydney Festival will include Blak Out, a celebration of First Nation perspectives on art, queer identity and culture, with this year’s events being held at Barangaroo Reserve under the creative direction of Bangarra’s previous Head Designer Jacob Nash. 

Blak Out highlights include Jacky at Belvoir St Theatre, and Tina – A Tropical Love Story featuring Top End drag performer Miss Ellaneous, plus the extraordinary Dark Noon, a re-telling of the Wild West by a cast of South African artists.

Continuing his dialogue with Sydney audiences is photographer William Yang, who turns the spotlight on himself and his journey of being Australia’s most notable gay photographer as he navigates his family, identity and culture over fifty years. 

Yang will be accompanied by a group of musicians including Elena Kats-Chernin AO.

Pasifika artist Telly Tuita is this year’s Artist In Residence 

Pasifika artists are not forgotten, with this Sydney Festival’s Visual Artist in Residence at the Thirsty Mile being Telly Tuita, a Tongan/Australia/New Zealander who has the most incredible back story.

Born in Tonga in 1980, he was abandoned by his parents and sent to Australia at age nine to first live with his father, and then Uncle and Aunty in Sydney’s western suburbs.

Tuita overcame great adversity and gained a number of degrees and rose to being an assistant principal as a high school art teacher. It was as a combination of his relocation and interest in art that he created Tongpop, his own visual language, drawing on his cultural influences that will take over the Thirsty Mile as he explores time and space with Telly Tuita: The Ta and Va of Tongpop.

Tuita will be applying his Tongpop sensibility to a rebirth of the steamship SS John Oxley as he draws from his ancestors’ maritime history by reframing the water space and the vessel. Tuita will also be an influence on the musical series Resonance as the performers respond to the theme “birth, destiny and what we leave behind”.

They embrace the last works of greats such as Purcell, Haydn and Bach, while celebrating the legacy of female composers who at the time were forbidden to publish music. 

Tuita will also be collaborating with artists Amigo and Amigo at the Thirsty Mile as they present Colour Maze, a wonderland of adventures for kids.

Diversity is strength for the Sydney Festival

KATMA’s Azzam Mohamed from Sudan will unveil a world premiere of street and club dance with seven dancers fusing Afro, breaking, house, hip hop, locking and waacking over four nights at Bell Shakespeare’s The Neilson Nutshell.

Over two days Wendy Whiteley’s Secret Garden will explore Brett Whiteley’s record collection with performances by William Barton, Veronique Serret, Sydney Philharmonia Choir’s VOX and Chamber Singers along with Joseph and James Tawadros.

Delving into Detroit’s musical heritage are Chez Damier and Alton Miller, pioneers of the Music Institute that came about as a response to the city’s house music scene. This will be the first time that these legends have toured together and expect them to delve deep into their record collections at the City Recital Hall. Australian music royalty Not Waving Drowning will be performing their ground breaking album Tabaran with PNG legend George Telek and other PNG artists from the original recording. 

In an Australian premiere, Daptone recording star Jalen Ngonda will take the stage at City Recital Hall with his distinct sounds of his new soul. 

There’s a rich program of free events, so there’s something for everyone.

Don’t miss out on everything this year’s Sydney Festival has to offer. Tickets are on sale now at sydneyfestival.org.au.