There’s a moment when a festival stops being just a collection of performances and morphs into something larger. It seeps into the streets, claims the laneways, turns everyday spaces into playgrounds. That’s exactly what RISING does every winter in Melbourne—pulling the city into an after-dark adventure where music, theatre, and light installations take over.
This year, the festival has outdone itself. Across 12 nights from 4th to 15th June, RISING promises to be a full-throttle, no-holds-barred spectacle. Think Punjabi rap shaking up Fed Square, a storm of kinetic lasers inside the Capitol Theatre, and an invitation to sit in stillness at QV Square and do absolutely nothing. And that’s just the start.
Melbourne’s South Asian community will have plenty to claim as their own. At BLOCKBUSTER, expect a riot of Pakistani truck art, street food, and a lineup that swings from hypnotic Sufi melodies to deep basslines straight from Lahore. Over at the Flinders Street Station Ballroom, mini-golf gets a creative makeover thanks to artist-led designs, including contributions from Tokyo’s latex-loving Saeborg and Anangu pop-culture queen Kaylene Whiskey.
The festival’s music lineup is equally magnetic. Suki Waterhouse lands in Melbourne for her first-ever Australian shows, while Japanese Breakfast returns after eight years, fresh from turning her best-selling memoir Crying in H Mart into a film. Then there’s Beth Gibbons of Portishead, bringing her voice to Hamer Hall like a wisp of smoke curling in the cold.
For those who crave something raw, Brooklyn’s indie-rap icons Black Star will bring their razor-sharp lyricism to the stage. And if there’s one gig to mark on the calendar, it’s the debut Australian performance of Pete & Bas, the grime duo proving that age has nothing to do with keeping the crowd on its feet.
Theatre and dance performances at RISING refuse to stay in neat boxes. Shakespeare’s Hamlet is getting reimagined by a neurodiverse cast, turning its famous soliloquies into spoken-word rap. In The Butterfly Who Flew into the Rave, club dancers from Aotearoa will condense a full-throttle, three-day rave into an hour of relentless movement. And at Arts House, Monolith sees five fierce Brown women standing like immovable stone, a symbol of resistance and strength.
Then there’s Space Out, a South Korean installation that turns stillness into a competitive art form. The concept? Sit. Do nothing. Stay still for 90 minutes while the world watches. In an era where everyone is always plugged in, always hustling, always chasing the next thing—this might just be the most rebellious act of all.
Of course, it wouldn’t be RISING without its signature neon-drenched chaos. Night Trade returns, sending the city’s arcades into a full-blown sensory overload. There’s food, microbars, music, and surprises tucked into every corner. Whether you plan to stay for an hour or end up stumbling home at sunrise, it’s the kind of party Melbourne does best.
And somewhere between the lasers, the raves, and the soundscapes buried under water at the City Baths, there will be those quiet, breathtaking moments—where the lights flicker just right, the music shifts into something unexpected, and for a second, Melbourne feels like a different city altogether. That’s the magic of RISING. It doesn’t just put on a festival; it changes the way the city feels.
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