SYDNEY FESTIVAL 2025 PROGRAM: THEATRICAL RAPTURES, MUSIC LUMINARIES AND A WOVEN WONDERLAND ENLIVEN SUMMER OF ART

Summer in Sydney is set to soar to new heights with the unveiling of a blockbuster Sydney Festival program for 2025. Running 4–26 January, the almost month-long international arts festival is an opportunity to rediscover the city differently, from Sydney Town Hall’s conversion into a Wild West pioneer town, to a salacious true crime tale staged in the docks of Darlinghurst Courthouse. Across World Premiere productions, Australian exclusives and immersive experiences that reflect the city’s identity, Sydney Festival is the home of world class theatre, must-see music and powerful performance this January.

With tickets officially on sale from today, Sydney Festival is rewarding pre-planners, savvy shoppers and festival fanatics with an allocation of $49 Early Bird tickets up for grabs across the entire ticketed program until 2 December (or sold out). With A Reserve seats available for just $49, this limited offer celebrates Sydney Festival’s milestone 49th anniversary whilst addressing cost of living pressure by encouraging festival-goers to book early, see multiple shows and secure a prime position.

Complementing the ticketed program, Sydney Festival’s action-packed free program for 2025 will ensure a truly accessible and expanded summer of art for all. Throughout January, Sydneysiders and visitors will once again be enticed to take part in an exhilarating summer of art across 23 days of storytelling, knowledge sharing and cultural immersion.

Introducing her fourth and final festival line-up, Festival Director Olivia Ansell said: “Sydney Festival has long held summer’s cultural pulse and this year is quite the heartbeat. Stories of Oceania, destiny and what we leave behind through to bold explorations of utopia and dystopia, Sydney Festival 2025 promises an exhilarating and thought-provoking journey through the arts with exceptional talent at the reins. This January, immerse yourself in a summer of unforgettable performances, groundbreaking new works, and exclusive experiences that reimagine the world around us.”

The Hon. John Graham, Minister for the Arts, said: “Sydney Festival has timing on its side, delivering a burst of cultural expression and artistic activity from January 4 when the city is largely off work and ready to celebrate and explore during the long hot days and nights.”

“This year’s edition puts First Nations artists at the forefront and brings new international works to Australia to ignite and inspire audiences. I encourage everyone to hunt through the program, attend and see what Sydney Festival 2025 has to offer.”

Featuring over 130 shows and events, including 22 World Premieres, 24 Australian exclusives, 43 locations, and over 50 free events inclusive of more than 12 nights of free live music, Sydney Festival 2025 amasses an expansive roster of diverse local artists and renowned international names this summer.

Year on year, the Festival’s annual program serves as a reflection of the questions, ideas and themes consuming the cultural zeitgeist, as brought to life in the words and works of its talented class of featured artists. In 2025, the often blurry edges of utopian idealism and dystopian despair are writ large in the likes of Dark Noon’s extraordinary one-act dismantling of American history and Cliff Cardinal’s subversive updating of the Bard's classic in As You Like It or The Land Acknowledgement.

Concurrently, examinations of birth and destiny are explored via the transformative installations of 2025 Visual Artist in Residence Telly Tuita and the participatory What We Leave Behind project from Cave Urban, which serves as a totem of festival-goers’ hopes for the future.

Curated by Sydney Festival’s Creative Artist in Residence, Jacob Nash, the First Nations-led Blak Out program introduces a new gathering space and expanded festival footprint with three weekends of conversation and events that celebrate the coming together of people, country, spirit and truths.

Across the city, Sydney Festival will play host to some of the hottest about shows of the season, from the highly anticipated World Premiere of Siegfried & Roy: The Unauthorised Opera and a deeply personal night of storytelling from Sydney icon William Yang, to an exciting new dance work by celebrated Australian choreographer Stephanie Lake, an eclectic run of live music gigs at the ACO On The Pier, and a blockbuster roster of powerhouse cabaret featuring Christie Whelan Browne, Rachael Beck and Katie Noonan.

FESTIVAL HIGHLIGHTS

Step inside the Darlinghurst Courthouse for a sensational 20th century murder trial inspired by one of Sydney’s most titillating scandals in A Model Murder. Shirley Beiger was a part-time page three girl enraged by her two-timing boyfriend. She shot him, point blank, outside Chequers Nightclub one night in 1954. Guilty or innocent? Audiences will decide. With the story created by playwright Melanie Tait (The Appleton Ladies’ Potato Race; A Broadcast Coup) and written/directed by Sheridan Harbridge (44 Sex Acts in One Week), A Model Murder takes place at the very courthouse of Beiger’s original trial, opened exclusively for this Sydney Festival season, for a wickedly funny and immersive recreation of the sensational true crime event that had Australia on tenterhooks. 

The Wild West rolls into the Sydney Town Hall with the Sydney Festival-exclusive staging of Danish visionary Tue Biering’s breakout Edinburgh Fringe hit, Dark Noon. Fresh from a five-star run at New York’s St Ann’s Warehouse, a phenomenal South African cast flip the script on Hollywood tropes, reimagining the frontier with slapstick humour, satire and breathtaking stagecraft. As a pioneer town springs up in real time, Dark Noon pulls audiences into a raw, immersive ride through history that confronts power, race and displacement. 

Award-winning Swiss director Milo Rau ends his trilogy of political works with a reimagining of Sophocles’ Antigone. Theatre meets activism in Antigone in the Amazon as a group of Brazilian and European actors and musicians portray the environmental endgame unfolding at the edge of the Amazon rainforest in Pará, Brazil. From a classical story of one woman’s stance against the state emerges a dark song about the dangers of exploiting the land and its people. 

In an Australian exclusive, Canadian First Nations cultural provocateur Cliff Cardinal brings As You Like It or The Land Acknowledgement to the Sydney Opera House for an evening of Shakespeare like none other. Affording audiences a poignant glimpse of the unvarnished truth of the reconciliation process between Indigenous communities and colonial settlers in Canada, what results is a devastating yet laugh-out-loud examination of land acknowledgements as cultural and political practice. 

Making its World Premiere at the festival, Constantine Costi and Luke Di Somma’s brand-new Australian opera, Siegfried & Roy: The Unauthorised Opera, is a modern stage spectacle inspired by Las Vegas’ most famous and legendary duo. Raised in war-torn Germany, the eccentric showmen went on to become the highest paid magic act Sin City had ever seen. Complete with live magic, powerhouse vocals, and the iconic duo’s show stopping tiger, Mantacore, this epic new opera has plenty of tricks up its bedazzled sleeves.