Vivid Sydney

Vivid Sydney is an annual celebration of creativity, innovation, and technology that transforms Sydney for 23 days and nights. In 2025, for its 15th year, Vivid Sydney will fuse art, innovation, and technology in collaboration with some of our time’s most boundary-pushing artists, musicians, thinkers, and culinary experts.

Mark 23 May – 14 June 2025 in your calendar and explore the Light, Music, Ideas and Food program.

Brace yourself for a city illuminated with awe-inspiring art installations and 3D light projections, casting a magical glow upon Sydney’s iconic buildings and urban spaces. Expect live music and performances that transcend boundaries, with emerging and established artists sharing their stories through dance and song.

Immerse yourself in thought-provoking experiences and heartfelt discussions led by inspiring minds and free-thinkers addressing the big questions. We’ll also indulge your palate with pop-up markets and dining experiences that pay homage to the rich diversity of our community through delectable culinary delights.

In 2025, Vivid Sydney invites you to dream big, go to the outer reaches of your mind, think differently without boundaries or preconceptions, and immerse yourself in new experiences and ideas. We want you to dream with the lights on, to daydream, to dream without boundaries, to soar.

We want to share our dreams with you in 2025—dreams that take you out of your everyday life and inspire awe, joy, and discovery. Dreams that delight, provoke, and engage—the motivational, the emotional, the beautiful, and the quirky. Vivid dreams are expressed through light, music, ideas, and food in the most beautiful and inspirational city in the world.

Zones & Venues

For Vivid Sydney 2025, we’ve introduced a new way to experience the festival action, five zones: Circular Quay and The Rocks, Barangaroo, Darling Harbour, The Goods Line and inner city and for the first time since 2018, Vivid Sydney in Martin Place.

Each of these five zones is designed to be its own hub of Light, Music, Ideas and Food. Make a night of it at each—dazzling light, great food and a gig, talk or performance—before venturing to your next stop.

Martin Place and CBD
For the first time since 2018, Vivid Sydney lights up Martin Place and CBD, transforming the city’s heart into a hub of Light, Music, Ideas and Food. Experience the centre of Sydney in a whole new light with dining experiences in unexpected places, large-scale works transforming buildings and world-class food, performances and talks.

The Lucid Dream Collective by Moment Factory merges AI with light, transforming your face into a surreal and evolving projection. The Chasing Dreams Tunnel showcases the bold work of Bundjalung artist Dr Bronwyn Bancroft. Planet City: Live envisions a hyper-dense urban future, and Where Do Ideas Come From? Creativity Inside TIME’s Cover offers an intimate look at the creative mind behind the magazine’s most iconic visuals.

City Recital Hall hosts world-class performances from Warren Ellis and Tangerine Dream. At the same time, food lovers can savour Nigella Lawson’s exclusive Vivid Sydney Dinners or explore First Nations cuisine at the Native Food Experience at NSW Parliament House.

Circular Quay and The Rocks
This dazzling zone is home to Sydney’s most iconic landmarks transformed. Bold and imaginative projections, world-class performances, thought-provoking experiences and the very best of the world’s cuisine illuminate this picturesque zone.

Sydney’s most iconic landmarks come alive with breathtaking Light and world-class Music, Food and Ideas. Lighting of the Sails: Kiss of Light by David McDiarmid transforms the Sydney Opera House into a tribute to their artistry, while Vincent Namatjira’s King Dingo reclaims history on the MCA’s façade. House of Romance: Dreams Collide brings Romance Was Born’s fantastical fashion to life at Customs House.

First Nations culture takes centre stage with First Light and First Light: Live. Dine in among the trees with Dream Mist with Luke Nguyen at Botanic House, experience Dance of Dreams with Danielle Alvarez or the best international and local musicians at VIVID Live at the Sydney Opera House, or taste bold flavours at Foodlab, showcasing emerging migrant and refugee chefs.

The Goods Line and Inner City
Sydney’s creative underground comes to life at The Goods Line, where hidden spaces and urban landscapes become the stage for creativity, fire and light. Experience mesmerising installations, gather around glowing fire sculptures and explore experimental performances that push boundaries and reimagine the possibilities of our city.

Sydney’s creative underground ignites with fire and interactive art. Vivid Fire Kitchen serves up the best in global BBQ and live-fire cooking, Near the Fire Kitchen action, the surreal and mesmerising Eye of the Beholder looks on with the Frank Gehry windows lit up with larger-than-life human eyes. The best Australian chefs take over Refettorio OzHarvest for Our Shared Dream: A World with No Waste, where rescued ingredients are transformed into feasts.

Discover avant-garde cinema at Dream Logic: Four Films by Antoinetta Angelidi at Golden Age Cinema & Bar. Over in the Hollywood Quarter, Hollywood Dreaming blends neon-lit food and film magic into an unforgettable precinct-wide experience.

Darling Harbour
A spectacle of music, light, and interactivity, Darling Harbour is a dream playground for people of all ages and interests. In addition to the waterfront spectacle, this zone is also home to Tumbalong Nights, a free music program that runs all festival long.

A vibrant spectacle of light and creativity. Samsung’s Space to Dream creates a breathtaking water show, while Curiosity creates an interactive playground of seesaws that watch you back. Tumbalong Nights deliver a festival-long line-up of free music featuring Vivid Sings!, PASIFIX, and Winston Surfshirt, bringing electrifying performances to the heart of the city.

Barangaroo
Barangaroo is a cultural and creative nexus where storytelling and technology come together. A great family-friendly zone for those seeking a quieter festival experience.

A hub of storytelling, technology and immersive experiences. An Act of Being, a stunning collaboration between Bangarra Dance Theatre and Reconciliation Australia, blends dance and digital art. Wander through Somnius, a dreamscape of thousands of shimmering lights, or gather around Bon(d)fire, where stories ignite the flames. Law and Life: Transgender Stories shares powerful voices, Endling envisions our future, and Firetalk, curated by Jazz Money, brings First Nations storytelling to life by the fire in partnership with the Sydney Writers’ Festival.

Colour The City

Paint our town red… green, pink, blue, or whatever colour or pattern you dare to dream up! This interactive and community-made projection transforms the ASN Clock Tower into a canvas for us all.

Download the colouring page template, unleash your artistic vision and then see your work projected during Vivid Sydney 2025.

Each week, 150 unique artworks will be selected and showcased—featuring your contributions along with submissions from our 2025 Charity Partner, the Sydney Children’s Hospitals Foundation.

More than just a tapestry of our city’s creativity, this is a symbol of the beauty of community and a celebration of freedom of expression.

Dream-big, Sydney.

Why We Sleep, featuring Professor Matthew Walker

Good sleep is as essential to our health as diet and exercise—yet it remains as mysterious to us as our dreams. In this insightful discussion, brought to you in partnership with Sydney Writers’ Festival, world-renowned neuroscientist Professor Matthew Walker, author of the New York Times bestseller Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams, delves into the science of sleep, dreams and their profound impact on our wellbeing.

Hosted by ABC’s All in the Mind’s Sana Qadar, this conversation explores what defines good sleep, the effects of caffeine and alcohol and the surprising connection between sleep and sex. Professor Walker will also share practical strategies for jet lag and discuss the link between sleep and Alzheimer’s disease.

Whether you’re a night owl, an early riser, or a tosser-and-turner, this is your chance to gain life-changing insights from the world’s leading sleep expert. Prepare to reconsider what you think you know about sleep—and discover why it might just be the most powerful tool you have for a healthier, longer life.

This event is presented in partnership with the Sydney Writers’ Festival.

Carriageworks Night Market

Carriageworks’ legendary Night Market is back for Vivid Sydney, and this year, it’s all about dreams—big, bold, and delicious!

Handing the reins to the next generation of culinary stars, young guns from Sydney’s top bars and restaurants will step into the spotlight, representing their team and serving up a dish or drink that’s entirely their own—their dream, on a plate or in a glass, for you to taste Expect incredible food, killer cocktails, live music to set the vibe, and a People’s Choice Award where you get to crown a future food legend.

Vivid Fire Kitchen

The flames are back—bigger, bolder and hotter than ever.

Vivid Fire Kitchen reignites at The Goods Line, delivering a fire and flavour sensory feast. This year, we’re turning up the heat with “Fire & Spice”, a bold new twist that celebrates the world’s most vibrant, spice-driven cuisines alongside flame-seared favourites. Enjoy live demonstrations and an array of fire-cooked cuisine from the world’s best pitmasters, chefs and barbecue legends.

This free-access, open-air experience is more than just a feast—it celebrates culture and community. Wander through the flame-lit night, breathe in the smoky aromas and watch the glow of open flames as chefs work their magic.

Lighting of the Sails: Kiss of Light by David McDiarmid

A defining voice of late 20th century radical counterculture, David McDiarmid fused art, fashion, nightlife with bold activism and unapologetic self-expression.

On the 30th anniversary of the artist’s death, Lighting of the Sails: Kiss of Light transforms his life’s work, rooted in activism and provocation, into a new animation projected onto the Sydney Opera House for Vivid Sydney.

Organised by mood and feeling, Kiss of Light is a slow dance of texture, colour, feeling and idea, tracing the artist’s punk, queer sensibility. Featuring four key bodies of work —the Bedsheet Paintings, Disco Kwilts, and the Kiss of Light and Rainbow Aphorisms — the animation draws forward McDiarmid’s practice to the present day, broadcasting the experiences of a repressed minority while embodying complex truths, absorbing fear and preserving memory.

Across seven minutes, Kiss of Light reveals how McDiarmid used irony, humour, and fierce intimacy to celebrate diverse gender and sexual identities. Honouring the utopian underpinnings of his work, Kiss of Light is a rallying cry for equality, inclusion, and freedom, reminding us that joy, curiosity, and creative rebellion build a better world.

An Evening with Warren Ellis

Warren Ellis is an Australian music icon. He is the founder of Dirty Three, a longtime collaborator with Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds, a film composer (The Proposition, The Road), and one of the most celebrated multi-instrumentalists of his generation.

There’s another side to Warren you might not know.

In this special Vivid Sydney event presented in partnership with the Sydney Film Festival (SFF), Warren Ellis takes the stage for an intimate conversation about his life, music, and deep commitment to animal conservation—a journey beautifully captured in the new documentary Ellis Park (screening as part of SFF). Listen to Warren discuss the film and his mission to protect endangered species at his sanctuary in Sumatra.

Warren will also perform a short, intimate solo set as part of this special conversation.

Before the event, the documentary Ellis Park, directed by acclaimed Australian filmmaker Justin Kurzel, will screen at 4pm at State Theatre as part of the Sydney Film Festival. (Tickets sold separately)

King Dingo

A dingo stands tall, crowned in royal regalia, eyes alive with defiance. Landscapes flicker—empire dissolves into Country—as we are led through Australia’s colonial history through the eyes of the dingo, a First Nations everyman.

This bold and irreverent projection by acclaimed First Nations artist Vincent Namatjira will premiere on the façade of the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia as part of Vivid Sydney 2025. Accompanied by an original score by Jeremy Whiskey, the work fuses humour, striking imagery and music to create a powerful assertion of First Nations strength, unity and cultural reclamation.

Here, in the artist’s most ambitious multimedia work to date, the dingo—Vincent’s totem—takes many forms: the everyman, the leader, the agitator. From the hallowed halls of Buckingham Palace to the raw energy of a rock concert before a defiant return home to Dingo Country, King Dingo envisions a dream where First Nations culture, leadership and Country are fully recognised.

Where Do Ideas Come From? Creativity Inside TIME’s Cover

For over a century, TIME magazine has captured the defining moments of our era, distilling the zeitgeist into striking, thought-provoking covers. A mother breastfeeding her three-year-old son. A smoking gun, illustrated by Roy Lichtenstein, pointed straight at you. The words “Is God Dead?” emblazoned in bold red on black.

Few publications have shaped public discourse like TIME, where their visual storytelling is as impactful as the headlines and reporting themselves.

In this lecture, TIME’s Creative Director D.W. Pine—the man behind over 1,000 covers—takes us inside his creative process. From concept to execution, he reveals how TIME’s covers are designed to reflect, provoke and challenge. He’ll also touch on one of the magazine’s most frequent and controversial subjects—Donald Trump—through the lens of a cover artist, late-night comedians and the man himself.

A short Q&A session will follow this lecture.

Event Program

While we have mentioned some of the most popular event highlights above, so many events are being held during the 23-day festival that it’s impossible to mention them here. Please check out the official website’s event program for information on each event, dates, times, venues and entry prices.

Getting There

Extra trains and buses will run on weekends to help you get to and from Vivid Sydney locations. With extensive road closures and parking restrictions, it’ll be the easiest way to get to the festival as all locations are easily accessible by public transport.

You will need a valid Opal card or single-trip ticket to travel on public transport services to Vivid Sydney locations. Top up your Opal card online ahead of time to avoid the queues. You can top up your card via the Opal Travel App, top-up machines or at more than 2,100 retailers.

Alternatively, if you have a debit or credit card that displays the contactless payment symbol or a card-linked device, you can use it to pay for your travel by tapping on and off at Opal card readers on all public transport services. Adult Opal fare pricing applies, and you will receive Opal benefits, including daily and weekly fare caps.

With road closures and special event clearways in place in the city each night during the festival, parking access will be limited, and traffic will be heavy. Some car parks in the Sydney CBD will be inaccessible while roads are closed, and special event clearway parking restrictions will be in effect on most major roads each day of the event.

These clearways are strict no-parking zones for all vehicle types and apply even to local residents or Mobility Scheme permit holders. Check signs carefully; vehicles left in clearways will be towed, and a fee applies.

Frequently Asked Questions

What are the crowds like?
The Vivid Sydney Light Walk is very popular and attracts many people across the 23 nights of the event. Generally, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday nights and Monday public holiday nights attract the largest crowds. Those with young families and strollers should also consider coming to Vivid Sydney on weeknights when visitor numbers are expected to be lower than on weekends, and earlier in the night. Lights On is at 6 p.m. every night.

What happens if it rains?
Vivid Sydney is an all-weather event. Public safety is our number one priority, and should adverse weather conditions be experienced, there may be restrictions on which areas are operational. We recommend keeping up to date via our website and Vivid Sydney social channels.

Where is the best place to see Vivid Light around Sydney Harbour?
Some of the best vantage points are The Rocks, Sydney Opera House, Darling Harbour, Bradfield Park (under the Harbour Bridge at North Sydney), Luna Park, Lavender Bay, Walsh Bay, Barangaroo, or on the harbour itself.

Where is the best place to stay?
Sydney offers a range of accommodation, from budget options to five-star stays. To be close to the action, we recommend you stay in The Rocks, Circular Quay, Sydney CBD, Walsh Bay, Barangaroo, Darling Harbour, Pyrmont, or North Sydney.

Hotels with the best views of Vivid Sydney
For an iconic view of the Sydney Opera House and the Sydney Harbour Bridge, book your stay in Circular Quay. Approximately a dozen hotels surround the quay, each offering stunning views over Sydney Harbour, allowing you to choose the perfect view for you.

If you’re treating yourself
If you are looking to splurge, consider the Park Hyatt, which is located directly under the Sydney Harbour Bridge and situated on the Vivid Sydney Light Walk. From your room or any of the three bars and dining rooms, you’ll enjoy an incredible view of the Sydney Opera House and all the lights along Circular Quay.

Further around the quay, the Four Seasons and Shangri-La, each towering over 30 floors, provide breathtaking harbour views from above, making it the ideal sight to wake up to or say goodnight to.

Set just back from the wharves, the higher floors of the Marriott Circular Quay offer excellent views of the Sydney Opera House and the city lights. They are also surrounded by some of Sydney’s best bars and restaurants, which offer special, Vivid Sydney dining experiences during the festival.

Step right into the Light Walk
The Vivid Sydney Light Walk spans about 8 kilometres, so you don’t have to be directly on the quay to experience the lights. Consider accommodation in The Rocks and Walsh Bay, such as the Harbour Rocks Hotel or Pier One, so you can step straight on the path of the Vivid Lights.

Other great locations along the way include Barangaroo, where you can stay in the tallest building in Sydney – The Crown Sydney. Even if you don’t stay there, you can visit their Sky Deck on the 83rd floor for incredible panoramic city skyline views. Alternatively, book an Adina Apartment along King Street Wharf, allowing you to step out onto a whole strip of waterfront bars and restaurants.

Tumbalong Park is a hub of Vivid Sydney events with installations and live music every year. Many hotels line the park, including the Novotel Sydney Darling Square and Vibe Sydney Darling Harbour. Staying here also gives you quick access to Darling Harbour and Darling Quarter, which host a myriad of Vivid Sydney events and installations each year.

The best views for backpackers
You don’t need to stay in a Penthouse to catch the views. For a more budget-friendly stay during Vivid Sydney, The Sydney Harbour YHA rooftop has a stunning panoramic view of Sydney Harbour, so you can still get the 5-star experience for under $100 a night.

Alternatively, Wake Up! Sydney, or the Space Q Capsule Hotel are conveniently close to Central Station, situated at the end of the Light Walk and within walking distance of other Vivid Sydney event locations such as Carriageworks and Powerhouse.