Your Guide to Adelaide's Exciting Festival Season 2022

Mark these dates on your calendar because there isn’t a better time to visit Adelaide, whether you’re catching world-class comedy and theatre performed in leafy parklands, being transported by a sublime opera or dancing to global beats under the stars.

Starting with the Adelaide Fringe on the 18th of February, Adelaide's festival season is a colourful extravaganza of creativity at its best. Spend your visit weaving between the different events at Adelaide Festival, WOMADelaide and The Fringe, and if you stay at Hotel Indigo Adelaide Markets you can even bring the party home – rooms at this colourful boutique property are decorated with posters from past festivals.

Adelaide Fringe
18 February to 20 March

A packed program of more than 1000 shows across 300- plus venues means CEO Heather Croall is serious when she says “you can enjoy Adelaide Fringe everywhere: large outdoor amphitheatres, immersive light displays, in laneway activations, theatres, laundromats and more”. Grab a seat at a riotous burlesque drive-in theatre, listen to improvised jazz by The Necks in a gorgeous Art Deco former cinema or marvel at a swarm of drones dancing in formation at the world premiere of Sky Song. Then grab a drink in one of the many pop-up bars before dining alfresco on nearby Rundle Street as clowns heckle and sequinned divas serenade you.

Adelaide Festival
4 to 20 March

The Fringe’s sophisticated elder sibling specialises in high-spec productions and co-artistic director Rachel Healy has put together a “feisty and defiant” program for 2022's Adelaide Festival. Hot tickets include Barry Kosky’s fantastical Golden Cockerel with what Healy calls “the world’s greatest singers and a massive orchestra”. There’s also Pina Bausch’s The Rite of Spring, “a seminal piece of modern choreography reimagined by 38 dancers from 14 nations across the African continent”.

WOMADelaide
11 to 14 March

Rapper Barkaa, a Malyangapa, Barkindji woman from western NSW, will perform at WOMADelaide Adelaide Festival 4 to 20 March / adelaidefestival.com.au The Fringe’s sophisticated elder sibling specialises in high-spec productions and co-artistic director Rachel Healy has put together a “feisty and defiant” program for 2022. Hot tickets include Barry Kosky’s fantastical Golden Cockerel with what Healy calls “the world’s greatest singers and a massive orchestra”. There’s also Pina Bausch’s The Rite of Spring, “a seminal piece of modern choreography reimagined by 38 dancers from 14 nations across the African continent”. WOMADelaide 11 to 14 March / womadelaide.com.au Over a magical long weekend, WOMADelaide transforms Botanic Park into a carnival of music, art and dance. This year marks the festival’s 30th anniversary, which will be celebrated across seven stages. Find your bliss lying beneath majestic Moreton Bay figs or dance yourself into a frenzy to a lineup that features some of Australia’s finest First Nations artists, including Baker Boy, King Stingray and rapper Barkaa. Paul Kelly, who performed at the first festival in 1992, returns to the stage. “It’s a big deal to have him back for the closing night, with a full band featuring Vika and Linda Bull,” says associate director Annette Tripodi

Over a magical long weekend, WOMADelaide transforms Botanic Park into a carnival of music, art and dance. This year marks the festival’s 30th anniversary, which will be celebrated across seven stages. Find your bliss lying beneath majestic Moreton Bay figs or dance yourself into a frenzy to a lineup that features some of Australia’s finest First Nations artists, including Baker Boy, King Stingray and rapper Barkaa. Paul Kelly, who performed at the first festival in 1992, returns to the stage. “It’s a big deal to have him back for the closing night, with a full band featuring Vika and Linda Bull,” says associate director Annette Tripodi.