The Best of Arts in Sydney 2025: Unmissable Performances and Events

After an incredible 2024, the city's art scene continues to evolve with exciting performances and events that promise to captivate audiences from January onwards. From Grammy-winning artists to unforgettable theatre shows, here’s a look at some of the top Sydney arts events you won’t want to miss in 2025.

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The Roots

The Roots

📍 Hordern Pavilion

📅 Jan 2

Kicking off 2025, Sydney fans will be lucky enough to enjoy an evening with Grammy Award-winning hip-hop visionaries The Roots. This is the band’s first Australian headline tour in 12 years. Joining all shows as special guests will be US Brooklyn-based MC, Talib Kweli, and three-time Grammy-nominated songwriter from Melbourne, Nai Palm.

Sydney Festival

📍 Multiple Venues

📅 Jan 4 - 26

Sound the trumpet! Sydney Festival 2025 dates are set. From 4 – 26 January there's only one place in the world you want to be – Sydney, baby! It’s the final lap around the harbour for outgoing Festival Director Olivia Ansell before she finishes her tenure, and she intends to go out with a big, colourful bang.

Keep an eye out online for the full program announcement: sydneyfestival.org.au

Air Time

Air Time

📍 Seymour Centre

📅 Jan 7 - 11

A chaotic nexus of wheels, dance and parkour. Skate ramps tower over you, propelling BMXers, skaters, dancers, and parkourists with extreme speed and height. Air Time is a thrilling nexus of wheels in motion with the elegant flow of dance and parkour. 

Boris Brejcha

📍 Carriageworks

📅 Jan 18

World-renowned DJ and producer Boris Brejcha is set to take over Bays 22-24 at Carriageworks with his signature electronic sound, promising a night that will push the boundaries of live electronic music. Known for his pioneering genre “High-Tech Minimal” and his iconic Joker mask, Boris’ beats and unmatched stage presence promise to captivate and transport the crowd into another world.

The Whitlams

Switched On: The Whitlams

📍 City Recital Hall

📅 Jan 18

The Whitlams take the stage to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the double platinum album, Love This City, and write a new chapter in its storied history on the City Recital Hall stage. Tim Freedman will be joined by long-term cohorts guitarist Jak Housden and drummer Terepai Richmond, who were both part of the sessions back in 1999, with new member multi-instrumentalist Ian Peres. It will be an evening of memories, milestones and humour as the band delivers its usual rambunctious performance, complete with the power of brass. Get ready to party like it’s 1999!

Billie Eilish

📍 Qudos Bank

📅 Feb 24 - 28

Following the news of her highly anticipated third studio album HIT ME HARD AND SOFT, Billie Eilish has announced Australian arena dates, produced by Live Nation and Frontier Touring, for her HIT ME HARD AND SOFT: THE TOUR.

Starting in North America in September 2024, Eilish will embark on an Australian leg in February 2025. Catch her in Sydney at Qudos Bank Arena on Feb 25-28. 

Kylie Minogue: Tension Tour

📍 Qudos Bank

📅 March 1 - 3

Kylie has announced her highly anticipated Tension Tour for 2025, which will see the global icon perform in cities across the globe and is set to be Kylie’s biggest tour since 2011.

Kylie said: “I am beyond excited to announce the Tension Tour 2025. I can’t wait to share beautiful and wild moments with fans all over the world, celebrating the Tension era and more! It’s been an exhilarating ride so far and now, get ready for your close-up because I will be calling Lights, Camera, Action … and there will be a whole lot of Padaming!”

Kylie Minogue Tension Tour

Song of First Desire

📍 Belvoir Theatre

📅 Feb 13 - March 23

Camelia is losing her grip, lost between the past and the present as she passes her days in the garden of her Madrid home. Her children employ Alejandro, a Colombian migrant, to look after her. But this house isn’t what it seems, keeping the terrible secrets of history in its stones…

From the inimitable Andrew Bovell (When the Rain Stops Falling, Things I Know to Be True) comes a superb new play of passion, history and politics, intimate in its detail and epic in its storytelling: Song of First Desire. Written for an acclaimed theatre collective in Madrid (where it premiered in 2023), we’ve invited Jorge Muriel and Borja Maestre from that original cast to join the great Kerry Fox and Sarah Pierse for the English premiere.