Newcastle's biggest art festival has just wrapped up, and it left a lot to unpack. New Annual 2026 ran from Friday 25 September to Sunday 4 October, ten days that turned Laman Street, the Newcastle Foreshore, the Ocean Baths, Charlestown Square and the Canoe Pool into a spread of art, music and performance. The program reached right out past the CBD into suburbs like Carrington, with events at the Newcastle Museum, City Hall, Civic Theatre and Wheeler Place, and a family program that was free for the most part, filling the first week of the school holidays.
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The exhibitions were the anchor. At Newcastle Art Gallery, MUSE by Angela Tiatia opened alongside the festival and runs through to 7 February, a first major survey of the Newcastle-based artist that brings her moving-image work The Matildas out on tour for the first time from the National Portrait Gallery. The gallery itself is worth a visit on its own: the largest public gallery in NSW outside Sydney, it reopened in February after a major expansion that added 1,600 square metres of exhibition space, a new café, a retail shop, a multi-purpose program space and a learning studio. Over at Charlestown Square, Bloom by MelissaLikesSushi turned part of the centre into an overflowing garden, while the Newcastle Museum gave Mr Squiggle and Friends a tribute with hand-made puppets, sketches and an interactive squiggle station. Down at the Canoe Pool, Cavitation: Breathing Ocean floated marine floaters collected from Far North Queensland, paired with Izabela Pluta's Cavitation exhibition at The Lock-Up, and Watt Space Gallery showed Night Flowers, Damien Frost's photographic series of late-night dancefloors, complete with a free glass of bubbles on arrival.
The live side was just as busy. A free First Night Art Party on Laman Street set things off with Aleksiah, Djanaba and Ngaiire, and SOAK at the Baths brought free outdoor music to the Ocean Baths over four nights, with Hermitude, Claire O'Brien, Kobie Dee, 92WRLD and Karen Lee Andrews among the bill. In Carrington, Lenny's Country paired Worimi Auntie Debbie's storytelling with illuminated puppets from Curious Legends, and Wheeler Place hosted a two-night Global Table, with an Asia night featuring MasterChef Australia's Depinder Chhibber and a South America night of Latin jazz and Day of the Dead workshops. For the kids, Curtain Call: Strut Your Stuff put a catwalk in Newcastle Museum Park with hourly walks and sewing workshops, and AT SEA saw Catapult Dance Choreographic Hub perform at dawn at the Canoe Pool before a public workshop in the sand.
The adult program leaned into performance: re:group's rock opera AUTO-TUNE at The Playhouse, fifty young actors from Tantrum Youth Arts in Press Play, Dance Makers Collective's ALL IN at City Hall, Betty Grumble's GRUMBLE BOOGIE dance meditation at Watt Space, and a Spiegeltent cabaret in Civic Park. If you missed the festival, the art doesn't stop here. Newcastle Art Space has Biophilia running from 6 November to 13 December, Welcome to the Suburbs through to 18 October, and Synergy, the 2026 mentorship exhibition, at the University Gallery until 14 November, plus a Todd Fuller drawing masterclass on 24 October and an art trivia night on 17 October. And if you're an artist, the MADE NEW expressions of interest are what to watch for next time around, with funding of up to A$40,000 per project for site-specific work that tells a local story.
Published Date
5 October 2026
