The Northern Territory's flagship music festival BASSINTHEGRASS has locked in a massive 2026 bill, bringing a powerful mix of homegrown talent and international names to Darwin's Mindil Beach on Saturday 16 May 2026. The NT's biggest day in live music will once again transform one of Australia's most recognisable coastal backdrops into a celebration of contemporary music, tropical lifestyle, and Territory spirit.

Finnish folk metal favourites Korpiklaani have given a cheeky Nordic twist to a New Wave classic, releasing a video for their energetic cover of ‘Got The Time', the frantic Joe Jackson hit famously turbo-charged by Anthrax in 1990.

Bondi Beach will reclaim its place as one of Australia's great outdoor music locations in February 2026 when Crowded House headline the inaugural Golden Hour series, the first major concert staged on the sands of Bondi in more than ten years. On Friday 20 February 2026, Sydney's most recognisable shoreline will transform into a twilight stage for thousands of music fans, celebrating summer's close with one of the region's most storied bands.

American post-hardcore turned melodic alt-rock outfit Rain City Drive will make their maiden trip to Australia in March 2026, confirming a five-city national run presented by TEG MJR. After building a global audience with emotionally charged anthems and high-octane modern rock performances, the Florida-based band will bring their full live firepower to Australian fans for the very first time.

Sixty years ago this week, Motown released a landmark that would define the sound of soul for generations. Smokey Robinson And The Miracles' ‘Going To A Go Go', issued on 1 November 1965, stands as one of the signature albums of the golden Motown era, and six decades on its legacy still rings loud.

Sydney Festival will hit a milestone in January 2026, marking 50 years as one of Australia's most culturally defining events. From 8 January to 25 January, Sydney will once again become a living stage for theatre, dance, visual art, literature, cabaret and music, with this year's program celebrating five decades of artistic change while imagining the city's creative future.

Skindred are back, and they're not easing in gently. The Newport genre-smashers have unleashed “You Got This”, the blistering title track from their upcoming ninth album, landing 17 April via Earache Records. It arrives armed with a riotous new video and all the ragga-metal energy that has made Skindred one of the most uplifting and unpredictable heavy bands of the past two decades.

David Gray's first Australian show of the 2025 tour, at Perth's Riverside Theatre, felt like a homecoming and a new chapter rolled into one, when local star Gordi, Ella More, joined him on stage for a stirring performance of Plus & Minus. The collaboration, taken from Gray's most recent record, Dear Life, crystallised a theme that ran through the night, emotional truth, the power of company, and the way a song can change when another voice walks into it.

American singer-songwriter Delaney Bailey will release her long-anticipated debut album Concave through AWAL on 21 January 2026, unveiling a deeply personal world where emotion, introspection, and cinematic soundscapes collide.

UK electronic-art-pop duo The Itch have returned with a new single, Space In The Cab, a bittersweet dance-floor elegy released through I OH YOU in partnership with Fiction Records. The track arrives ahead of the band's appearance at The Great Escape's First Fifty showcase in London on 13 November, marking the latest chapter in one of the UK underground's most intriguingly unconventional rising acts.

Billy F Gibbons, the unmistakable bearded architect of ZZ Top's blues-rock roar, will kick off 2026 with a fresh run of solo dates across the United States. The tour, under his banner Billy F Gibbons And The BFG Band, will begin 20 January in Napa, California and travel coast-to-coast for six weeks, wrapping up on 28 February in Atlanta.

A decade and a half after its release, Nick Cave's The Death Of Bunny Munro has found new life on screen, with BINGE dropping the first official trailer for the six-part limited series ahead of its 20 November premiere in Australia. Based on Cave's 2009 cult novel, the darkly comic and deeply tragic tale stars Matt Smith as Bunny Munro; a door-to-door beauty salesman, grieving widower, self-appointed ladies' man, and father barely hanging onto the idea of fatherhood.

Dutch gothic storytellers Blackbriar have embraced the spirit of the season with a chilling re-imagining of The Fossilised Widow, recast as an intimate piano parlour piece in honour of Samhain and All Hallows' Eve. The new version strips the song to its bones, spotlighting vocalist Zora Cock's ethereal timbre over mournful piano, a stark contrast to the symphonic metal power of the original album recording.

Chan Marshall, known globally as Cat Power, will celebrate the twentieth anniversary of her landmark 2006 album The Greatest with a new EP, Redux, and a full-album world tour in 2026. The acclaimed American singer-songwriter will perform The Greatest in its entirety across North America and Europe, honouring an era that reshaped her artistry and cemented her place in modern indie and soul-infused rock history.

Australian instrumental icons Dirty Three will return to North American stages for the first time in 14 years, announcing a March-April 2026 tour across the United States and Canada. The run marks the Melbourne-formed trio's first extensive shows outside Australia since the release of their 2024 album Love Changes Everything, the band's first studio recording in 12 years.

The Cure will bring fans back into the shadowy glow of London's Troxy this December, announcing a cinematic release for The Show of a Lost World, the concert film capturing their one-night-only performance of Songs of a Lost World in full. The film screens globally for one night only on 11 December.

The Queen Of Burlesque, Dita Von Teese, will illuminate Australian stages once again in August 2026 with her most ambitious production yet. The all-new Nocturnelle tour will arrive two years from now courtesy of TEG Dainty, marking a triumphant return for the internationally celebrated performer whose theatrical glamour has helped reinvent burlesque for a new era.

The Growlers will return to Australia in January 2026, marking their first tour down under in six years and their first global run since 2019. The influential Southern California outfit, fronted by Brooks Nielsen, will kick off their comeback in Australia with a run of East Coast headline shows, joined by Melbourne surf-garage rockers The Grogans on all dates except Torquay.

Perth five-piece South Summit have lit another fuse under their fast-rising career, unveiling a bold sonic leap with their new single We Are.

José González has returned with a burst of colour and childlike wonder. The Swedish singer-songwriter, world-renowned for his delicate acoustic style and introspective folk, has released ‘Pajarito', a tender, playful Spanish-language track inspired by childhood, independence, and the gentle unfolding of life's meaning. The song arrives via City Slang alongside an equally whimsical video, crafted in collaboration with AI tools Sora and VEO.

Alan Niven, the former manager who guided Guns N' Roses through the most explosive years of their career, has filed a lawsuit in the United States seeking to unblock the release of his memoir Sound N' Fury: Rock N' Roll Stories. The action was filed on 3 November 2025 in the District Court of Arizona, with Niven requesting a jury trial and a declaration that a 1991 confidentiality agreement cannot be used to stop his book.

Swedish modern rock force Self Deception will make their long-awaited Australian headline debut in April 2026, following a sold-out European arena run that cemented their place among Scandinavia's most exciting rock exports.

Robert MacLean Taylor, the gifted New Zealand guitarist who helped shape the sound of one of Australasia's greatest rock bands, Dragon, has died. His passing, announced in early November 2025, marks the loss of one of the last surviving members of the band's classic 1970s lineup, and a musician whose work bridged the golden eras of New Zealand and Australian rock.

Dave Mustaine has decided to close the book on one of metal's most storied rivalries by paying tribute to his own past. Megadeth's upcoming self-titled final album, Megadeth, will include a brand-new recording of Metallica's 1984 classic Ride The Lightning, a song Mustaine co-wrote before being fired from Metallica in 1983.

Download Festival, the spiritual home of heavy music in the United Kingdom, will roar back to life in 2026 for its 23rd edition, rebranded as DLXXIII. From 10 to 14 June 2026, Donington Park in Leicestershire will once again become the global epicentre of rock, metal and alternative music with three colossal headliners, Limp Bizkit, Guns N' Roses and Linkin Park, performing their only UK shows of the year.

Sean “Diddy” Combs has been granted a fast-tracked appeal by the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, giving the disgraced hip-hop mogul an opportunity to challenge his July 2025 conviction and four-year sentence far sooner than the usual lengthy process would allow.

Bad Company frontman Paul Rodgers has confirmed he will not attend the band's long-awaited Rock & Roll Hall of Fame induction on 8 November in Los Angeles, citing health concerns.

Leslie Kong's name rarely appears on the marquee, but his fingerprints are all over the songs that made Jamaica's music a global language. A Chinese-Jamaican businessman who began life running an ice-cream parlour, a restaurant and a record shop on Orange Street in Kingston, Kong turned a chance audition outside his shop into Beverley's Records and effectively launched modern reggae. His label and production work took ska and rocksteady, polished them, and helped shape early reggae into an exportable sound that found listeners from London to New York.

The Doors' 60th anniversary was marked with a spectacular, one-night-only tribute concert at Los Angeles' legendary Greek Theatre on 30 October 2025. “A 60th Anniversary Doors Celebration” brought together generations of musicians to honour one of rock's most transformative bands and their landmark 1970 album Morrison Hotel.

Conquer Divide's story is one of evolution, resilience and reinvention. The transatlantic rock force, formed by musicians from the United States, the United Kingdom and Canada, has risen from their early days in Michigan's metalcore scene to become one of modern rock's most dynamic voices. Their new single The Ocean Between Us marks another milestone in that decade-long journey.