Marlon Williams, Grace Jones and More Are Coming to Adelaide – Here's What To Expect

WOMADelaide – World of Music, Arts and Dance – resists easy description. It’s one of the few Australian festivals where international headliners and first-time discoveries share the same stages, and where the crowd spans generations. As the night stretches on, twenty-somethings drift between sets while families settle in under the trees of the Adelaide Botanic Gardens – a setting that shapes the experience as much as the music itself.

The 2026 line-up includes local artists like Baker Boy and Barkaa, New Zealand’s Marlon Williams, alongside hip-hop trailblazers Arrested Development, and art-pop legend Grace Jones. 

While Womad is now a staple of the summer events calendar, it began as a gamble.

“Back in ancient times – 1992 – I was the general manager of the Adelaide Festival. Rob Brookman was the artistic director, and he had the idea to try and find a way to present music outside the format of the concert hall,” says WOMADelaide’s co-founder and director, Ian Scobie. 

The aim was to showcase what was then broadly categorised as “world music, which didn't have a way to find an audience”. In the ’90s, before streaming and algorithms, discovery was manual. You weren’t being served EDM from Yugoslavia or Cuban funk via a feed; you had to walk into a record store knowing exactly what you were looking for. The artists who defied categorisation were typically labelled as world music.

While planning the 1992 Adelaide Festival, Scobie and Brookman approached the WOMAD organisation, an international festival formed 10 years earlier by Peter Gabriel and Thomas Brooman. What began as an initial conversation quickly grew into a collaborative venture to present the very first WOMAD Festival in Australia in ’92.

That first line-up included performances from Paul Kelly, Crowded House and a groundbreaking performance from the lauded Pakistani artist Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan.

Initially held every other year, WOMADelaide became an annual event in 2000 – with Scobie at the helm ever since.

Which performances have been most memorable?

There have been a few actually. One was The Manganiyar Seduction, which was kind of like a large jewel box of Indian musicians in the park. Beyond responding to the music, it was such a breath of fresh air that really surprised the audience. And you know, in that sense, I suppose it would be hard to go past Place des Anges, our big aerial piece with the feathers. 

We used four tonnes of feathers overall – a tonne of feathers every night. It was an extraordinary exercise, logistically, but it was worth it for the euphoria of the crowd. Everyone became a child again when the feathers touched you.

What are your must-see acts in 2026?

Hard to go past Oumou Sangaré. She’s an extraordinary, wonderful voice. She’s the kind of performer whose voice will float through the festival and draw people in. I love watching that crowd reaction. 

In terms of a performance piece, I’m excited to see Rosas Danst Rosas. WOMADelaide has had a really strong tradition of trying to present the D in WOMADelaide: the dance. Rosas is an incredibly seminal work that changed the face of both contemporary dance and performance, and it’s a challenging piece, so I’m going to be really interested to see how the audience respond to it. Usually, whenever I’ve had that kind of slight sense of nervousness, the audience just get it and loves it.

Jovanotti’s reputation precedes him. He’s had a fascinating career. He’s hugely popular, particularly in Italy. I don’t think we’ve had an Italian headline artist before at the festival. He started off as a hip-hop DJ and then moved through rap and funk and into his current language, I suppose you’d call it a huge earnt following. And by all accounts, his live performances are really stunning. So, I think that’ll be fun to look out for.

What offstage events are you most looking forward to?

There’s a piece from a company called Cie Hors Surface, who are a contemporary circus. It’s a mix between dance and physical performance. It’s led by an incredibly athletic trampolinist. They’re doing two different shows, but one of them is called Le Poids des Nuages, which translates to the weight of clouds. It’s a delightful piece that has a super-sized trampoline with a hole in the middle of it, out of which comes a ladder. And it’s kind of this meditation on weightlessness.

We’ve also got five different roving performances from Born in a Taxi, who are doing a residency this year, so each day they’ll do a different piece.

What’s your biggest piece of advice for first-time visitors?

I would tell them to expect the unexpected. To be relaxed: it’s a really comfortable, friendly vibe.

Also, to download the app, do a little bit of planning, and use the app to set a reminder for performances they want to see. 

Our programming is very much designed to encourage people to walk, to go from stage three to stage two, and go down to Frome Park and listen to some talks.

If you’ve got children, take them to Kidszone. Kids have such a great time, but be warned, once they’re there, it’s hard to get them to leave.

Broadsheet is a proud media partner of WOMADelaide.