Winter festival RISING is coming back to Melbourne, and today, they’ve revealed a stacked program of art, music and more. Embrace the colder nights and look forward to over 100 events, featuring 376 artists, seven world premieres and 11 Australian premieres. Find the festival all across the city, in railway ballrooms, galleries, town halls, theatres and more. RISING will run from Wednesday May 27 to Monday June 8.
RISING 2026
Australian Dance Biennale
This year, expect the launch of the inaugural Australian Dance Biennale. Presented by RISING every two years, this event will showcase the strength of Australian and international dance, with performances and mass participation events across stages, club nights and public spaces.
The historic Flinders Street Ballroom will transform into a living dance academy in Land of 1000 Dances. Visit the ballroom and take part in classes, spanning genres like Bollywood, ballet, jazz, jive, Polyswagg and more. Classes will be led by Victorian dance legends and world champions.
Aotearoa/New Zealand’s street-dance group, The Royal Family Dance Crew, will present Defend the Throne at Hamer Hall. Founded by choreographer Parris Geobel, this three-time World Hip Hop Championship-winning crew will showcase their legendary sets, as well as new choreography.
They will also light up Fed Square with a free, all-ages party, showcasing Pasifika music, dance and culture. Watch them on stage, and dance along with them in a mass participation event. The energy will continue with a line-up of Pasifika artists spanning Polynesian techno and dancehall.
The Biennale will end with Sissy Ball at Melbourne Town Hall. Cypher Culture will transform the space into an electric celebration of Ballroom culture.
Music highlights
Day Tripper, the festival within a festival, will make a return to RISING. One ticket will give you access to live music and performance at Max Watt’s and Melbourne Town Hall. The line-up includes Kae Tempest, Saul Williams, Kahlil El’Zabar, The Congos and more.
Brooklyn rap royalty, Lil’ Kim, will come to Melbourne. She will celebrate Hard Core and The Notorious K.I.M, two multiplatinum records that ushered in the millennium of rap.
Find a pew inside St Paul’s Cathedral and feel a Voiceless Mass. Listen as this ensemble piece by Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Raven Chacon, featuring flute, clarinet, organ, percussion, strings and electronics, transforms the Cathedral into an atmospheric space.
Discover Bass Lounge, a weekly club night hidden beneath a Chinatown food court. Located in the Paramount Retail Centre, this space will feature local and international DJs, live performers, private karaoke rooms and unexpected encounters. Bass Lounge will run each Friday of the festival from 10pm to 4am.
More parties include a RISING edition of State Library Up Late and a Naarm Soirée at Abbotsford Convent.
More cool stuff
European director Florentina Holzinger will return to Melbourne for RISING, after the sell-out success of her 2023 show TANZ. This time, she will bring a A Year Without Summer, a musical-comedy, to the Arts Centre Melbourne. The show will look at medical science, mortality and the monsters we create in the name of progress.
Meanwhile, Narcissister’s Voyage Into Infinity will take over The Substation. Drawing on haunted carnival aesthetics, lo-fi magic and raw punk energy, the Brooklyn-based performer will build and unravel a giant, Rube Goldberg-like contraption of ladders, planks, pylons and swinging objects, operated by doll-like companions who set chain reactions in motion.
The façade of Hamer Hall will light up each night with a large-scale, First Nations projection. Titled Calling for Country: The Land Speaks Back, this piece features the work of local and international artists, including Cannupa Hanska Luger, who was born on the Standing Rock Indian Reservation in North Dakota.
Melbourne Science Gallery will showcase their exhibition EMERGENC(Y), which will explore how humans and non-humans adapt to a world in flux.
We’ve only just scratched the surface of all the things you can see and do at RISING this year. To see the full program, click here.