Blooming marvellous: Spring days to electric nights at BLEACH
The 11-day BLEACH Festival returns to HOTA on the Gold Coast in October, offering a plethora of live music, dance and interactive art.
Looking for a psychedelic experience on the Gold Coast? No, not that sort. We’re talking about the natural high you will get at this year’s BLEACH Festival.
This year’s event will include Better Days Studio Group taking over the panoramic Level 5 viewing platform of HOTA Gallery with their performance Kaleidoscope Skies, offering an immersive, psychedelic perspective on the Gold Coast skyline.
If you know the view from there, you’ll know it is stunning and it will be even more stunning this October when contemporary arts celebration BLEACH will spring to life with a program of about 50 events across 11 days and nights.
Produced by Experience Gold Coast, BLEACH will include free and ticketed works spanning contemporary performance, theatre, live music, large-scale and participatory installations and unexpected creative experiences.
From noon performances daily and immersive encounters through to late-night celebrations under the stars, BLEACH will transform the HOTA precinct at Surfers Paradise.
Artistic director Felix Preval says the 2026 program reflects the festival’s evolving identity and an opportunity to create new connections between artists, audiences and place.
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“BLEACH Festival embraces the new season, offering audiences a fresh way to experience the Gold Coast through art, performance and shared moments of discovery,” Preval says. “From afternoon adventures to midnight celebrations, we’re inviting audiences to explore, connect and experience art through the eyes of some of the most exciting creative voices from Australia and beyond.”
This year’s line-up includes more than 290 contributing artists from the Gold Coast, across Australia and around the world. The program features new local commissions, world premieres by national companies, Queensland exclusives and exciting community-engaged works that celebrate the spirit of the city and offer audiences new ways of seeing and experiencing art.
Dance will take centre stage with a line-up that breathes energy into the springtime program with contemporary movement, immersive experiences and genre-defying performances.
The Butterfly Who Flew Into the Rave, by New Zealand dance pioneer Oli Matheson, brings Berlin to the HOTA Basement in a celebration of rave culture. BLEACH audiences can keep the dance energy going as the Basement transforms post-show into Club Peroxide, a free club experience over the opening weekend, immersing audiences in the festival rave scene.
Harrison Ritchie-Jones’ Cuddle transforms the Black Box Theatre into a wresting ring, for a riotous dance work that combines contemporary dance with martial arts, boot scooting and wildly inventive technology. Ancient Javanese spirituality will merge with techno-fantasy aesthetics as local dance artist Juliet Burnett presents Cyvasa 2.0 in the HOTA Gallery.
Gold Coast First Nations dance company Karul will present Kuramanunya (Gore-rah-mah-nunya), featuring Thomas E.S. Kelly (Minjungbal, Wiradjuri and Ni-Vanuatu). This solo dance theatre performance will pay tribute to ancestral strength, spirit and enduring legacy.
Visitors can also discover unexpected creative worlds with Melissa Gilbert’s Hyper Temples transforming the HOTA Gallery Foyer into a living ecosystem of play, participation and imagination.
The HOTA Gallery program will extend into experimental sound and performance, with Japanese sound artist ASUNA’s 100 Keyboards, a mesmerising exploration of sound created through the accumulation of 100 toy keyboards; and Naina Sen’s multi-screen, multi-channel immersive video works Shundori, an evocative work that immerses audiences in an exploration of South Asian feminine beauty.
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Gold Coast-based stunt performer and filmmaker Sarah Huston will present new video work Rekindle Rekindle at the HOTA Gallery, and present Footnote: a yeah girl retrospective, a panel discussion and film screening at HOTA Central. Both works celebrate the history, resilience and evolution of women’s skateboarding.
As part of the HOTA Lake Precinct takeover, VOICES by Pulsing Hearts will feature a large-scale light and sound installation with participants spinning 50 translucent tubes to activate a sculptural wall of light and choral sounds building in intensity, creating a shared multi-sensory experience.
First Nations circus company Na Djinang Circus will give two free outdoor performances of Ocker in the HOTA Lake Precinct, while How the Birds Got Their Colours by Arc Circus and the Yugambeh Aboriginal Dancers, blends circus, movement and First Nations’ storytelling in a celebration of culture, connection and imagination.
Multi-award-winning acrobatic work A Simple Space by Gravity and Other Myths makes its Queensland debut on the theatre stage, featuring seven acrobats pushing the limits of human strength and agility alongside a live percussionist.
Along with a range of other performances and in celebration of the region’s thriving music scene, the festival will present a dedicated free live music stage at the HOTA Lake Precinct. The line-up includes sets from Tijuana Cartel, Blind Corners, Laurel Hill, Ella Fence, Karl S. Williams and Super Massive, as well as performances from the BLEACH Festival Choir at sunset throughout the festival.
Atman’s Nomad: Silk Road Project will take audiences on a musical journey inspired by the rich cultural connections that have shaped the historic Silk Road.
Continuing the choral theme, Cold Ghost’s Arkestra Choir will premiere their new ensemble with two intimate performances on Level 5 of the HOTA Gallery.
The festival will culminate in High Tide, a closing event featuring live music and visual spectacle with jet-pack performers taking flight above the HOTA Lake and 100 giant jellyfish puppets descending on the parklands. The celebration will continue under the stars with a family-friendly rave on the Live Music Stage, bringing audiences together for a joyful finale.
Other acts at BLEACH include monumental outdoor performance work THAW by Legs on the Wall, two major live music events by Lady Blackbird and NZ chart-toppers Six60, new theatre works No One Gets Out of Here Alive by The Farm and a large-scale immersive installation by global design sensation Morag Myerscough, in collaboration with Gold Coast community arts organisation Everybody Now!
Experience Gold Coast head of arts and culture John Kotzas says this year’s program celebrates 15 years of artistic ambition and creative collaboration on the Gold Coast.
“BLEACH Festival has championed the Gold Coast’s creative identity, growing from a bold local initiative into one of Australia’s leading contemporary arts festivals,” Kotzas says.
BLEACH Festival runs October 1 – 11.
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