Dark Mofo, Australia’s celebrated mid-winter solstice festival, will return to Lutruwita/Tasmania from Thursday 11 June to Monday 22 June 2026, once again transforming Hobart into a city drenched in red light, fire, ritual and sound.
The annual event, staged by David Walsh’s Museum of Old and New Art (MONA), will bring back its signature large-scale installations, musical performances, and community rituals, including the Winter Feast, Night Mass, Ogoh-Ogoh burning, and the Nude Solstice Swim, which welcomes the sunrise after the longest night of the year.
Dark Mofo 2026 Artistic Director Chris Twite said anticipation for next year’s festival is already building.
“Mark your calendars,” Twite said. “We’ll once again bathe the streets in red, feast by firelight and indulge in a smorgasbord of art, music and performance. With plenty of surprises in store, revellers can secure early access to Night Mass tickets and start planning their winter debauchery.”
A strictly limited first release of tickets to Night Mass, the festival’s late-night takeover of Hobart’s CBD, will go on sale from 10am Wednesday 5 November 2025 for those who pre-register through the Dark Mofo website.
The 2026 program will be unveiled early next year, but if history is any indication,
Dark Mofo will once again deliver a mix of the provocative, the spiritual and the strange.
Since its debut in 2013, Dark Mofo has become one of Australia’s most distinctive festivals, emerging as a bold counterpart to MONA’s summer event MONA FOMA. Conceived by Leigh Carmichael, David Walsh, and Brian Ritchie (Violent Femmes, MONA FOMA curator), the festival began as a “marketing exercise” to boost tourism in Tasmania’s coldest months, but rapidly grew into a major cultural institution.
The first Dark Mofo in 2013 introduced Ryoji Ikeda’s “Spectra”, a 15-kilometre-high beam of light that now permanently rises from MONA’s lawns. The now-iconic Nude Solstice Swim-originally banned by police-became a defining moment of Tasmanian winter.
Over the years, Dark Mofo has welcomed an extraordinary lineup of artists across art, performance and music. Acts such as Mogwai, St. Vincent, The Kid LAROI, FKA Twigs, Dirty Three, Kim Gordon, Boris, and Thundercat have graced Hobart’s winter nights, performing alongside performance art, fire installations and feasts.
In 2023, the festival drew a record 427,000 total entries and 45,000 interstate visitors, generating more than $5.5 million in revenue. Key performances included Max Richter’s “Sleep”, which had attendees slumbering in cots overnight, and Florentina Holzinger’s “A Divine Comedy”, one of the most daring and discussed performances in the event’s history.
Dark Mofo has not been without turbulence. The festival was paused in 2020 due to the pandemic, returning in a scaled-down form before resuming fully in 2023. In 2021, the Union Flag controversy-an artwork that asked for blood donations from Indigenous participants-prompted the creation of a First Nations cultural advisory group and ongoing consultation with Palawa/Pakana communities.
After creative director Leigh Carmichael stepped down in 2023, Chris Twite (formerly of the Sydney and Falls Festivals) took the reins, signalling a refreshed approach to programming and sustainability.
Dark Mofo took a one-year hiatus in 2024 before roaring back in 2025, attracting over 50,000 interstate and overseas visitors and delivering an estimated $67 million economic boost to Tasmania.
Twite credits the enduring spirit of the festival to its supporters.
“We’re so grateful for David Walsh, the Tasmanian Government, and the community who allow us to keep celebrating the dark,” he said.
Tasmanian Minister for Tourism, Hospitality and Events Jane Howlett added that Dark Mofo remains one of the state’s most vital winter drawcards.
“Dark Mofo drives visitation to Tasmania during the off-season and is recognised globally as a world-class festival. Visitors stay longer, and our tourism and hospitality sectors thrive because of it.”
DARK MOFO 2026
Dates: Thursday 11 June – Monday 22 June 2026
Location: Lutruwita/Tasmania
First ticket release for Night Mass: 10am Wednesday 5 November 2025 (pre-registration required)
Full program announcement: Early 2026
Dark Mofo is a project of the Museum of Old and New Art (MONA), supported by the Tasmanian Government through Events Tasmania, and the City of Hobart.
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