Brisbane, clear your calendar. Melt Festival is back, and this year the music programme is louder, bolder, and ready to take over the city.
For nearly a decade, Melt has been the queer heartbeat of Brisbane’s cultural calendar – an unapologetic celebration of identity, creativity, and community. What started as a homegrown festival inside Brisbane Powerhouse has grown into something much bigger: three glitter-drenched weeks where shows of every shape and size collide to create a festival unlike anything else in Australia.
If last year proved Melt could transform Brisbane into a queer wonderland, this year doubles down. From chamber musicals to sweaty cabaret, from soaring vocal quartets to spandex-clad electro chaos, the 2025 programme isn’t just entertainment – it’s a declaration, a soundtrack, and a party rolled into one. It’s the sound of queer voices claiming space, and it’s about to echo across the city.
Things kick off with 'The Lucky Country', a chamber musical stitched together from Australian stories of identity and belonging. With a score that tips its hat to the nation’s musical greats, it’s moving, joyful, and deeply Aussie. This is the kind of work Melt was made for – ambitious, heartfelt, and unafraid to ask who we are and who we can be.
By week two, subtlety is out the window. 'Sugar', the debut cabaret from Tomáš Kantor, is pure pop spectacle – part 'Pretty Woman' fantasy, part glitter-fuelled fever dream, complete with songs from queer icons like Chappell Roan. It’s music, sex, and power colliding under stage lights, with Kantor proving why they’re already being called a star in the making.
On the very same night, Brisbane cult heroes Architects Of Sound return with their new era, 'ARTFAP'. Spandex, satire, and synths collide in a show that’s equal parts gig, mockumentary, and dancefloor meltdown. Expect ten brand-new tracks, reimagined cult classics, and visuals that feel like they’ve been pulled straight from the future. If 'Sugar' is a glitter bomb, Architects are the afterparty you didn’t know you needed.
Week three widens the spectrum even further. 'Vocal Spectrum' showcases four powerhouse singers – Katie Noonan, Fiona Campbell, Louis Hurley, and Andrew O’Connor – in a genre-blurring programme that moves from freshly composed chamber works to bold new takes on queer anthems. It’s spine-tingling, boundary-pushing, and proof that Melt’s music programme isn’t confined to any one sound or style.
The following nights, 'Queer As Flux' folds music into autobiography and activism. Zac Callaghan travels through queer and trans history with humour and heart, paying homage to trailblazers and reminding us that transition – in one way or another – is something we all experience. It’s deeply human, strikingly original, and one of the festival’s most vital offerings.
Then, Melt goes out the way it should: with a bang. 'The Kaye Hole', hosted by the unstoppable Reuben Kaye, is a sweaty, outrageous finale where music and mayhem take centre stage. With a live band driving the chaos, it’s a cabaret free-for-all where the riskiest acts cut loose, the crowd roars back, and nobody wants the night to end.
What ties all of this together is the way Melt uses music as more than entertainment – it uses it as a rallying cry. These shows don’t just soundtrack a festival, they soundtrack a community: loud, proud, and impossible to ignore. It’s about emerging artists finding their audience, established names reaching new heights, and Brisbane itself becoming a stage for queer joy.
So here’s the play: don’t just see a show, be part of the takeover. Whether you’re soaking up soaring vocals, losing yourself to sweaty cabaret, or discovering a new anthem that feels like it was written just for you, Melt’s music programme promises one thing – joy, glitter, and the undeniable truth that belonging is the loudest music of all.
Brisbane's Melt Festival 2025 is on from 22 October-9 November.
