Following a record-breaking, traffic-stopping, absolutely joyous festival in 2024, Melt Festival returns in 2025 to crank the fabulous factor up to eleven.
“After a phenomenal debut, Melt returns in 2025 as one of Queensland’s most dynamic and inclusive celebrations of arts and culture. Now in its second year, the festival continues to spotlight the creativity, pride, and diversity of our LGBTQIA+ communities, while drawing visitors from across Australia and beyond,” said Minister for the Environment and Tourism and Minister for Science and Innovation, Andrew Powell.
From Swarovski-studded cabaret icons to river flotillas, sweaty dance floors and hilariously gay PowerPoint nights, Brisbane’s annual festival of Queer arts and culture promises to be a city-wide celebration of internationally acclaimed artists, homegrown icons, sexy premieres and boundary-pushing brilliance. Following is a taste of what’s in store for Melt’s 2025 edition!
Get ready for the cultural climax of the year as fearless, sharp-witted and fabulous cabaret superstar, Reuben Kaye, unleashes the Queensland premiere of enGORGEd for Melt Festival 2025 at Queensland Performing Arts Centre (QPAC). Featuring Camerata – Queensland’s Chamber Orchestra and musical direction by Shanon D Whitelock, this is Kaye’s most lavish, loud and liberated show yet.
Making its Melt debut, Ben Graetz’s (aka Miss Ellaneous) Miss First Nation drag pageant will catwalk into Brisbane, celebrating Blak excellence, creativity and culture with the most glamourous Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander queens in the country. After state heats around the country, the grand finale will take centre stage at Melt, where the nation’s fiercest will battle it out for the crown. Expect jaw-dropping performances, powerful storytelling and cultural pride.
What does it mean to be “Australian” in 2025? New musical The Lucky Country tackles that question with wit, warmth and a touch of musical rebellion. Directed by Sonya Suares with music and lyrics by Vidya Makan, this genre-defying work confronts Australia’s cultural contradictions with honesty, heart and a rocking score. Get ready for a sharply observed, joyously unapologetic production that leaves no myth unexamined.
River Pride Parade returns, bringing a flotilla of fabulousness down the Brisbane River/Maiwar, from West End to Brisbane Powerhouse. Got a boat? Register your interest to join the fleet HERE. No boat? Get ready to SPLASH OUT as Harry K launches a fabulously Queer boat party on Brisbane’s newest entertainment venue OASIS.
Queer PowerPoint is back and it’s gayer, geekier and more gloriously unhinged than ever. Watch a rotating cast of Queer creatives turn boring boardroom tools into high-concept hilarity and unexpectedly wild theories. The only rule… they must use the most mundane medium, Microsoft PPT. Topic? Niche. Delivery? Unfiltered. Results? Hysterical. Think you’ve got something to share? Apply to present HERE.
Iconic star of stage and screen Bernadette Peters returns for her first Australian performance in over a decade and a major cultural moment for theatre and music lovers alike! An Evening with Bernadette Peters will hit the Brisbane Convention Centre on Friday 24 October. Expect a glorious night of songs and stories from Peters’ incredible career, accompanied by Camerata – Queensland’s Chamber Orchestra.
Last year Melt called on Australia’s LGBTQIA+ community and allies to get nude and 5500 people answered that call for Spencer Tunick’s monumental installation on the Story Bridge. This year Melt is asking you to get vocal! Round out your Melt experience with 1000 Voices – a major choral event uniting queer and ally choirs and solo singers in one monumental moment of song, spirit and solidarity – a love letter to community, courage and collective harmony. Goosebumps guaranteed.
Melt 2025 continues to push the envelope, bringing together explosive nightlife, emotionally resonant theatre and thought-provoking visual art. Hole-Mania 2.0 promises an unhinged, high-energy Queer wrestle-party at The Tivoli, hosted by Queer dance party icon Shandy and drag menace Gogo Bumhole.
Meanwhile, horror meets high drag in Scream Queen at the Princess Theatre, a blood-curdling drag spectacular starring a killer line-up of global drag royalty including Naomi Smalls, Yvie Oddly, and Drag Race UK winner Kyran Thrax.
In theatre, the program cuts deep with works that reckon with identity, belonging and colonisation. Jordan Shea’s award-winning Malacañang Made Us at Queensland Theatre explores the Filipino-Australian diaspora with epic scale and emotional grit.
Whitefella Yella Tree at La Boite Theatre is a luminous love story between two Aboriginal boys on the brink of invasion, a poetic and heartbreaking reflection on land and first love, while Gerwyn Davies new work Shimmer brings stunning, identity-focused photographic portraits to the Museum of Brisbane, made in collaboration with trans and gender-diverse young people at Open Doors Youth Service.
Other program highlights include the return of Micah Rustichelli’s Demon Rhythm, which challenges the value of image consumption through a massive work of painting and repurposed Instagram imagery from the app’s explore page, SEXY GAY ART at VENTspace, a saucy, subversive showcase of Queer desire in all its forms and Femme Follies Burlesque – a sapphic spin on classic cabaret that brings fierce femme energy and glamorous grit to The Wickham.
Rounding out Melt’s first program announcement for 2025 is Still Lives: Brisbane by Luke George and Daniel Kok, a roped-up homage to the city’s punk past, suspending instruments (and performers) in a haunting reanimation of Brisbane’s radical roots.
Lord Mayor Adrian Schrinner said Brisbane is ready to welcome visitors from all over Australia to this unique and beloved celebration. “Melt is an amazing celebration of our LGBTQIA-plus community, creating so much to do in our vibrant arts and cultural scene,” said Cr Schrinner.
“There’s no better place to have such an iconic festival, with our river, cultural precinct and Brisbane Powerhouse set to stage a program full of world-renowned acts, international artists and local talent.”
The 2025 Melt Festival run 22 October – 9 November. For more information, visit: www.melt.org.au for details.
Image: Reuben Kaye stars in enGORGEd – photo by Claudio Raschella