Spring often gets touted at the best time of the year in Brisbane – and fairly so. Just as Brisbane blooms with purple jacarandas and perfectly mild temperatures, the season also ushers in a number of cultural events to celebrate the city. For nearly three decades, Brisbane Festival has led the charge with its diverse line-up of sense-enlivening theatre, music and arts.

This year, Brisbane Festival returns to celebrate our fine city with 23 days of festivities, marked by world-class – and world-first – events. Curated by artistic director Louise Bezzina for the fifth year, Brisbane Festival 2024 is set to be a showcase of the best of Brisbane and beyond. “Brisbane Festival remains a celebration by and for Brisbane,” shares Louise, “so when we bring these global works to our city, we create opportunities to spotlight the extraordinary talents of our local artists on the world stage.”

With the unveiling of the 2024 program this week, Louise has remained true to her word. Fashion fiends will be satiated by the sensory feast of Jean Paul Gaultier’s Fashion Freak Show (August 30 to September 15), which is set to make its exclusive Australian premiere in the South Bank Piazza. The show is in collaboration with Queensland Indigenous artist Grace Lillian Lee, who was handpicked by the international fashion icon to collaborate on a bespoke couture piece in the show. Grace will also debut her solo exhibition with the world premiere of The Dream Weaver: Guardians of Grace (August 30 to September 21), which embarks on an ancestral journey through a fascinating fusion of contemporary art, traditional weaving techniques and couture fashion.

In addition to The Dream Weaver, this year’s festival will see 13 world premieres from theatre to dance and music. Opera Queensland will debut the remarkable true story of Straight from the Strait – an original opera that follows the Torres Strait Islander workers who lay an astonishing 7 km of railway track in a single day in 1968. Queensland-based dance troupe Dancenorth Australia will also be staging a new work, Lighting the Dark (September 12–14), a profoundly moving and life-affirming adventure developed in collaboration with Chris Dyke – a dancer and emerging choreographer with Down syndrome. For even more festival firsts, multi-award-winning live-performance miniseries Volcano will be at Brisbane Powerhouse from August 30 to September 15. This unique hybrid production plays out over four 45-minute live ‘episodes’, back to back, with short breaks in between. This voyeuristic fever dream blurs the lines of reality and fiction in this Netflix-binge-style live performance, combining theatre and dance with a television sci-fi thriller.

Trent Dalton’s seminal anthology Love Stories (September 10–29) will also be making its stage debut with a brand-new production from the team that brought us the Boy Swallows Universe play in 2021. Tinselled tastemaker Rachel Burke will also be premiering her new play Fancy Long Legs at La Boite Theatre (September 12–22), a sparkling musical adventure for theatre buffs young and old.

Following the tremendous success of 2023’s Nieergoo: Spirit of the Whale, Brisbane Festival has partnered with Nova Sky Stories and Tribal Experiences for a new all-ages show. The night sky will come alive with more than 400 drones in Skylore – The Rainbow Serpent (September 19–21) – a multicolour show celebrating culture and place. And, of course, the sky will also light up at festival-opening (and crowd favourite) celebration Riverfire by Australian Retirement Trust on Saturday August 31. 

From traversing the technicolour installations of Lightscape to setting sail from South Bank aboard The Art Boat and kicking back with a bunch of block parties and musical events taking place in the suburbs, expect your September to be jam-packed with culture and community this year.

Discover the full Brisbane Festival program here – and start planning your itinerary.