Featured Image: Evan Malcolm, CC BY-SA 3.0, Edited for size
Byron Bay’s iconic Bluesfest is looking more likely to return in 2026, just months after announcing 2025 would be its last edition.
Festival director Peter Noble has conducted a u-turn and said he has started booking acts for the 2026 edition of the festival. According to an interview with IQ Magazine, Noble also commented that he had been discussing support for festivals with the New South Wales Government.
Noble, the director of the long-running blues and roots festival, said he described next year’s edition as ‘final’ as a way to drum up support from the state government.
He told IQ: “August was a time of great disappointment. We had said to the government: ‘Look, we need investment at this time, the cost of live crisis is really affecting events and there are cancellations everywhere’.”
Noble also noted that roughly 89,000 passes had been sold for 2025 so far, heading for a sell-out.
He added: “All we’ve asked our state to do is to show us that they care about the most highly awarded event in the history of Australian music. Regardless, I will always find a way for Bluesfest to go forward – that is my job.”
Bluesfest has welcomed major artists over the last 35 years including Bob Dylan, Paul Simon, John Mayer, Mary J Blige and Kendrick Lamar. It has also hailed homegrown stars such as Cold Chisel, Midnight Oil and Crowded House. The festival welcomes around 100,000 music fans annually to its 300-acre Tyagarah Tea Tree Farm home, roughly 11km north of Byron Bay.
This year’s festival will see the likes of Vance Joy, Ocean Alley, Tones and I, Gary Clark Jr, Rag’n’Bone Man, Allison Russell and more take to the stage.
The 2025 edition of Bluesfest will take place from April 17-20 and tickets are available through Moshtix.
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