Winter festivals
in Tasmania

In a Tasmanian winter, cooler temperatures only mean the wild festivities are hotting up.

It’s a time when culture, dining and the arts come to the fore, and festivals embrace the chance to reveal what’s cool about the cold: fire, feasting and folklore. There are warming moments, such as a sizzling winter feast in Hobart, and there are cooling moments – fancy a nude dawn swim with a couple of thousand close friends?

Whether you’re firing up with art, food, science, song or whisky, winter festivals in Tasmania have you well and truly covered.

Dark Mofo

5–21 June

Concluding on the shortest day of the year – 21 June – when the sun sits below the Hobart horizon for 15 hours, Dark Mofo (5–21 June) is a celebration of all things dark, including the biggest winter feast in Tasmania. This Hobart winter festival stirs art, music and food into a delightfully irreverent salutation to the season.

Attention-grabbers over the years have included entombing an artist beneath one of the city’s main roads for three days, and sound and strobe assaults on the senses. It’s a fest that celebrates birth and death, but you’ll never have felt more alive.

The Winter Feast (5–15 June) is a festival highlight, with stallholders nightly serving some of Hobart’s best food in the company of fires, music and roaming performers, while Night Mass fills the capital CBD with weird and wild late-night installations and DJ acts.

The program wraps up on the morning of the winter solstice, when more than 2000 bold souls strip naked (except for their vivid red swim caps) on Sandy Bay’s Long Beach to sprint into the icy water as the solstice sun rises at the Nude Solstice Swim (21 June).

Catch the full program release in April and book your Hobart accommodation.

Bay of Fires Winter Arts Festival

6–15 June

With its gorgeous blue seas, white sands and granite boulders coated in orange lichens, the Larapuna / Bay of Fires area could easily be considered a natural artwork…but local and international artists take the spotlight during the Bay of Fires Winter Arts Festival (6–15 June).

Held in and around St Helens on the east coast of Tasmania, this June festival is headlined by the Bay of Fires Art Prize, a $20,000 acquisitive prize open to local and international artists. The winner is announced at the gala opening, and finalists’ works can be viewed across the festival exhibition.

Hit the road to meet local artists – and perhaps purchase a work or two – on Secret People, Secret Places, a driving trail connecting studios around the region. Other offerings include Artisans on Show, where local artists display and sell their wood products, jewellery, gems and more, and brace yourself to join the Dawn Dash n Splash, a clothing-optional sunrise swim at Binalong Bay beach.

Festival of Voices

27 June–6 July

Discover the warming power of song at Australia’s top celebration of voice, now into its 20th year.

Running for 10 days, Festival of Voices (27 June–6 July) is a Tasmanian festival in June and early July, held in venues across Hobart and beyond. It’s a time when Tasmania raises its voice – be it choral, cabaret, orchestral, rock, jazz, a capella, experimental or myriad other vocal expressions.

A distinctive feature of this Tasmania winter festival is its levels of participation and interaction, with a range of choral workshops, led by local, national and international artists, on offer each year. This is the perfect chance to live out that long-held stage dream. 

The festival is particularly family friendly, be it the signature Big Sing, which draws thousands of rugged-up voices into one around a roaring bonfire in Salamanca, or the two festival performances of the ever-popular Young Tasmania Sings, which features school and community youth choirs combining into a 250-strong vocal wonder.

Bicheno Beams

28 June–19 July

Best known for its surf, sand and seafood, Bicheno truly lights up across three midwinter weeks. Bicheno Beams (28 June–19 July) is a free, family-friendly laser light show that plays in the dark sky each night, accompanied by a soundtrack of music for a multisensory experience.

There are two shows, starting at 6pm, alternating across the nights of the alcohol-free event, so consider staying a couple of days to take in both (plan your accommodation ahead) – there’s plenty around this popular east coast beach town to occupy the days.

Simply turn up at the seafront Bicheno Lions Park each night, where festival volunteers will guide you to a viewing space for the 15min extravaganza of light. Arrive early, dress warm, bring a rug or chairs and fill the thermos. Let there be light!

Tasmanian Whisky Week

2–10 August

Tasmania’s whisky credentials are top shelf, with more than 70 distilleries dotted across the state, producing tipples acknowledged – with the awards to prove it – as among the world’s best. For one week in August, more than 40 of the state’s distillers come together to celebrate their craft at Tasmanian Whisky Week (2–10 August).

Events at this Tasmania winter festival are as varied as the state’s distilleries are numerous. There are tours to individual distilleries, and tours that combine several producers. In the evenings, pubs, bars and the distilleries themselves host special whisky-themed events. It might be a whisky quiz inside a taproom, a whisky cruise, a taste-off between Tasmanian and Scottish whiskies (go Tassie!) or perhaps a drag night with a dram of whisky in hand.

Wrapping things up is the Tasmanian Spirit Showcase, a one-day extended tasting session from all participating distilleries in Hobart’s dockside PW1 hub.

Beaker Street Festival

12–19 August

Who said artists get to have all the festivals and fun?

This science-minded winter fest in Hobart – the Australian city with the largest proportion of scientists in its population – rounds up all things scientific and artistic and mixes them, laboratory style, into an interactive fusion of entertainment and thought-provoking discussions. Held for one week in August, it spills across halls, pubs, outdoor spaces and everywhere between. It’s fun for all, regardless of your scientific bent.

Every year’s Beaker Street Festival program (12–19 August), which features some of Australia’s finest and most famous scientists, is new and unique. Popular past events have included Glow Show walks to discover the neon brilliance of nocturnal wildlife, polar plunges in ice baths along Hobart’s waterfront (coupled, Nordic-style, with a warming sauna) and Dark Sky Dinners featuring stargazing and Aboriginal sky stories while enjoying Tasmania’s celebrated food and drink.

From feel-good festivities to light shows and markets, see the full spread of Off Season events and pop your favourites into your winter itinerary with the Trip Planner.