What’s On: Sydney September 2026.
Spring has arrived and Sydney has apparently decided to leave the house.
September is stacked. Contemporary art takes over Carriageworks, Sydney Fringe spills across the city, underground cinema celebrates twenty years of keeping things strange, record collectors descend on The Rocks and some of the country’s best independent designers, vintage dealers and native food producers gather under one very large roof.
There are farewell concerts, First Nations performances, Taiwanese and African cinema, sake, jazz, theatre and enough festivals to make staying home feel mildly irresponsible.
This isn’t everything happening in Sydney this month.
It’s the stuff we’d make time for.
ART + DESIGN.
SYDNEY CONTEMPORARY | 3–6 September
For four days, Carriageworks becomes the centre of Sydney’s art world.
Sydney Contemporary celebrates its tenth edition this September, bringing together more than 100 galleries and 500 artists from Australia and around the world. Beyond the booths, there are large-scale installations, talks, performances, guided tours and Photo Sydney, its dedicated contemporary photography sector.
This year it also steps outside Carriageworks, with major public installations including a new commission by Kamilaroi artist Reko Rennie at Sydney Fish Market and an immersive work by Joan Ross at Barangaroo.
BASE CAST PICK: Thursday’s Art Night. The fair stays open until 9 pm with art, music, performance and The Huxleys appearing live.
MARGARET OLLEY: AUSTRALIAN INTIMISTE | Throughout September
The ordinary domestic world was Margaret Olley’s great subject: flowers, rooms, tables, objects and the strange intimacy accumulated by living among things.
Australian Intimiste brings that universe to the National Art School Gallery and offers a quieter counterpoint to September’s larger art-fair machinery.
UNTIL 24 OCT 2026
National Art School
FILM.
SYDNEY UNDERGROUND FILM FESTIVAL | 10–13 September
Twenty years of cinema that’s weird, unruly, cultish and occasionally difficult to explain afterwards.
Sydney Underground Film Festival returns to The Factory Theatre for its twentieth anniversary with four days devoted to independent and alternative cinema.
This is the antidote to algorithmic viewing: premieres, shorts, documentaries, cult cinema and films you probably wouldn’t encounter by scrolling the homepage of a streaming service.
Our preferred instructions are simple.
Choose something you’ve never heard of and take the risk.
10-13 SEP 2026
The Factory Theatre
TAIWAN FILM FESTIVAL IN AUSTRALIA | Until 6 September
One to explore rather than simply choosing a film because you recognise the director.
The final Sydney screenings of the Taiwan Film Festival in Australia continue into the first week of September, moving between NSW Parliament House and Sydney Opera House.
On 3 September, A Chip Odyssey looks at Taiwan’s semiconductor industry; on 6 September the festival heads to the Opera House with the 1983 Taiwanese New Wave anthology The Sandwich Man.
03 + 06 SEP 2026
Various Sydney venues
AFRICA FILM FEST AUSTRALIA | 3–6 September
African cinema isn’t a genre, and this festival makes a good case for why.
Africa Film Fest Australia returns with films from across the continent and diaspora, including Australian premieres, shorts and filmmaker conversations.
The program opens with South African drama Laundry, while The Eyes of Ghana follows 93-year-old cinematographer Chris Hesse as he tries to preserve an archive documenting Ghanaian independence. The festival closes with Black Is Beautiful, exploring photographer Kwame Brathwaite and the cultural movement he helped define.
03-06 SEP 2026
Various Sydney venues
PERFORMANCE.
RECLAIM: A CONTEMPORARY CEREMONY | 11–12 September
This is one we’d make time for.
Created by director, choreographer and storyteller Stephen Page AO, RECLAIM: A Contemporary Ceremony brings dance, spoken word, poetry and music into the State Library of NSW.
Drawing on stories and material held within the Library’s collections, the work explores resistance, survival, resilience and First Nations experience while asking a bigger question about archives themselves: who records history, who interprets it and who gets to speak it back into the room.
11-12 SEP 2026
State Library of NSW
1 Shakespeare Place, Sydney NSW 2000
SYDNEY FRINGE FESTIVAL | All September
For a month, Sydney gets a little less predictable.
Sydney Fringe spreads theatre, comedy, cabaret, music, performance and experiments of varying descriptions across venues throughout the city.
Trying to comprehensively explain Fringe rather defeats the purpose. Browse the program, find something slightly outside your usual cultural diet and see what happens.
01-30 SEP 2026
Various venues across Greater Sydney
MUSIC.
FIVE NIGHTS OUT
September’s live calendar could comfortably consume its own guide. These are five dates we’d circle.
KODALINE |
3 September - Enmore Theatre
AGNES OBEL |
27 September - Sydney Opera House
FASHION + MARKETS.
SECOND LIFE MARKETS | 13 September
Carriageworks gets considerably better dressed for the day.
Second Life Markets brings together more than 120 stalls of curated vintage from around Australia, alongside food, flowers, baked goods, coffee, matcha, and a crowd whose Sunday outfits occasionally threaten to overshadow what’s hanging on the racks.
Come early.
The good racks don’t wait.
13 SEP 2026
Carriageworks
THE BIG DESIGN MARKET | 18–20 September
Three days devoted to things you didn’t realise your apartment needed.
More than 230 independent Australian designers arrive at Carriageworks with ceramics, furniture, homewares, art prints, jewellery, fashion, stationery, and assorted beautifully designed objects.
Come hungry too. Food and drink are very much part of proceedings rather than the sad sausage-roll corner usually attached to a trade hall.
18 SEP - 11 AM–7 PM
19 SEP - 9 AM–6 PM
20 SEP - 9 AM–5 PM
Carriageworks
$8 / Under 12 free*
RECORD RUMMAGE | Sundays in September
There are worse ways to lose a Sunday than digging through crates of records.
Record Rummage takes over The Rocks on Sundays throughout September with rotating vinyl dealers, DJs and enough digging potential to send you home with an album you absolutely weren’t looking for.
Which is generally the point.
The Rocks Square
FOOD + DRINK.
AUSTRALIAN SAKE FESTIVAL | 11–13 September
Sydney gets three days devoted to one of Japan’s greatest exports.
The Australian Sake Festival brings Japanese producers, brewers, food, and culture together for a weekend that goes far beyond standing around sampling cups of sake.
Taste widely, ask questions and perhaps avoid driving home.
Overseas Passenger Terminal
The Rocks, Sydney
AUSTRALIAN NATIVE FOOD FESTIVAL | 26–27 September
Food as culture, memory, knowledge and connection to Country.
Curated by Weilwan woman and Indigiearth founder Sharon Winsor, the Australian Native Food Festival returns to Carriageworks for two days dedicated to native ingredients and Indigenous culinary knowledge.
The program moves between market stalls, workshops, cooking demonstrations and conversations, bringing chefs, producers and knowledge holders together rather than treating native ingredients as another passing restaurant trend.
Among Sunday’s sessions, chef Amber Doig joins Gomeroi/Gumbaynggirr woman Kerrie Saunders to explore connections between native foods and Mexican cuisine, while Adam Liaw, Jennifer Wong and Winsor come together for a conversation around food, culture and identity.
26 SEP - 9 AM–5PM
27 SEP - 9 AM–4 PM
Carriageworks
Free entry with registration. Selected workshops and chef demonstrations ticketed.
ALSO ON OUR RADAR | Not everything needs an essay.
CURTAINS JAZZ FESTIVAL
Throughout September
Curtains Jazz Club
THE ART OF IKEBANA
12 September
Art Department Studio, Woolloomooloo
((FEASTOPIA)) - A SUPPER CLUB
19 September
Art Department Studio, Woolloomooloo
SURRY HILLS VINTAGE MARKET
5 September
Shannon Reserve, Surry Hills
MY FAIR LADY
From 10 September
Sydney Opera House
THE DAMNED - THE FINAL DAMNATION
10 September
Sydney Opera House
KEEP LOOKING
This is the monthly edit, not the whole city.
For more exhibitions, gigs, performances, markets, screenings, strange little happenings and other reasons to leave the house, explore the full BASE CAST What’s On Sydney calendar.
SOMETHING WE MISSED?
BASE CAST’s What’s On is a monthly edit of exhibitions, gigs, screenings, openings, food, design, parties and things happening around the city.
If you’re an artist, venue, gallery, promoter, label, restaurant, designer or someone doing something we should know about: