Set to delight and connect locals while giving our city’s entertainment industry a much-needed boost, the 2020 Brisbane Festival will showcase a whopping 490 performances across 91 events – 73 that are free and 28 that have been commissioned especially for this year’s festival. The jam-packed roster of events kicks off with large-scale art project Messengers of Brisbane, starring six giant bird sculptures that will watch over the city from perches atop iconic Brisbane locations. Another one that will make you set your eyes on the sky is the much-anticipated Sunsuper Night Sky, a laser, light and sound show that will beam across Brisbane on Friday and Saturday nights throughout the festival. To give festival-goers a dose of musical magic, composer and artist Lawrence English will collaborate with some of Brisbane’s top-tier musicians to curate a series of performances across the city for The Listening Études.

Theatre fanatics can make tracks to QPAC to witness Leviathan, a spellbinding show featuring the gravity-defying acrobats and body-bending dancers that make up performance company Circa. More playhouse fun awaits at Brisbane Powerhouse, which will host Snapshot, a time capsule exhibition that showcases some extraordinary life-changing moments from the past few months through film, sound and live performance. The iconic riverside venue will also host One Bottle Later, a bold intimacy experiment where strangers will interview future friends over a bottle of wine. Taking the fun to the suburbs (all 190 of them) will be Street Serenades – a series of live-and-loud neighbourhood concerts, suburban symphonies and park gigs. Cul-de-sac cabaret Hot Mess Mama is a standout, which will see Brisbane singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Emma Dean serenading locals with a five-piece band.

This is just a sneak peek of the beast that is Brisbane Festival. You can dive into the 2020 Brisbane Festival program in all of its laser-soaked glory and purchase tickets to events here.