In 2025, Illuminate Adelaide will set winter alight with hundreds of drones over Adelaide Oval, a ten-minute dance party, career highlights from Velvet Underground co-founder John Cale, dinosaurs at the zoo, dinner ‘inside’ a winter forest and more.
The 2025 event will see 9 world premieres and 23 Australian exclusives and premieres. There are 134 opportunities for audiences to experience new and astonishing events, artists and creations.
Whether it’s the Adelaide exclusive ‘Horizons’, transforming Adelaide Oval into a living, breathing canvas. . . The sensory journey ‘Night Visions’ at Adelaide Botanic Gardens. . . The free ‘City Lights’ programme. . . Or Unsound Adelaide’s epic line-up of experimental music, there’s plenty to see and do this year.
“We are forging new frontiers by producing and presenting two new Illuminate Adelaide productions in ‘Night Visions’ at Adelaide Botanic Garden and Horizons at Adelaide Oval in conjunction with some visionary collaborators from all over the world. We continue to commission local artists to make new installations as well as inviting the best makers of immersive and interactive artworks from around the globe, and a new illuminated street performance element to light up our city in the depths of winter with another new and giant free program for City Lights,” Illuminate Adelaide Co-Founders and Creative Directors Lee Cumberlidge and Rachael Azzopardi say.
“In music we feature a hugely diverse offering from international music legends like John Cale and Ólafur Arnalds to an array of incredibly talented South Australian and Australian artists across our Unsound and Supersonic programmes.”
John Cale - Image © Madeline McManus
“Together with Universal Kingdom at Adelaide Zoo, Offline Club and our foray into the world of Adelaide’s delicious food and wine offerings, and more, Illuminate 2025 is looking to be our best yet.”
Along with a delightfully packed ticketed programme, Illuminate Adelaide also includes a bunch of free events, like street performance artists including ‘FierS à Cheval’ by French company Compagnie des Quidams. Plus, Adelaide Central Market will transform into a glowing hub of light and celebration, with a series of immersive art installations and performances.
For the music fans, there’s Unsound Adelaide – an outpost of Europe’s cult experimental music festival over two electrifying nights featuring John Cale, Yellow Swans, DJ Wolfgang Voigt, and UK avant garde musician aya.
Plus there’s Supersonic – a brand-new music event taking over the city’s West End for one night only. It marks a bold new chapter for the city’s night-time culture, with a programme curated by Motez at Lion Arts Factory, and The Sound Of Revolution film programme curated by Shalom Almond at Mercury Cinema.
Check out the full programme.
Illuminate Adelaide is on from 2-20 July.
