Falls Festival 2022/23 guide: Full lineup, dates, locations, ticket prices and more

There’ll also be all the usual Falls accoutrements; morning yoa, hammocks, swimming pools, food trucks and margaritas, the Shit Olympics featuring three legged races and backyard cricket, pinot and painting and more.

There’ll also be numerous glamping and VIP options. Club Falls tickets come with dedicated VIP event entry lanes, a concierge, private cocktail and food bars, fancy bathrooms and other services, while Falls Cabana tickets get you a 40 square-metre ‘private oasis’ in prime position overlooking the main stage and include 20 daily event passes, a private bar, food delivery service, lounge seating, VIP entry lanes and more.

How much are Falls Festival tickets?

Your comprehensive info guide and FAQs

Is Falls Festival happening this year?

It sure is! You’re forgiven for asking, given Falls has had a very rough trot having to cancel their Victorian event in 2019/20 just one day into its four day stretch in Lorne due to “predicted extreme weather conditions” for Monday December 30. Then in 2020/21, after originally announcing an all-Aussie lineup, the festival was forced into another cancellation due to outbreaks of COVID-19 and subsequent lockdown restrictions. 2022 is hugely different for a number of reasons, so get excited for a stellar array of international and domestic talent, in a new location, but with the same great vibes.

Falls Festival announces new Victorian home for NYE 2022

What to bring to Falls Festival?

There’s definitely a few must-have items you’ll need if you’re thinking of heading to Falls; tickets (an obvious one), proof of ID, car pass if you’re thinking of driving into the festival, a tent that works, sleeping bag and pillow, torch and folding chair. Sunglasses are also a must alongside spare clothes, especially warm gear for when the nights get colder, closed toe shoes (break in the Doc Martens pre-festival), a towel, sunscreen and bug repellent. Other things such as snacks, earplugs, a car phone charger, medication and a decent ice-breaker or joke so you can make a few new friends will also come in handy.

Falls is also completely cashless. To make the entire festival experience a bit easier, all payments will be made through payWave and mobile devices – that way you can spend less time waiting in line at the bar and more time getting to the front of the mosh!

You can also check out our major festival camping checklist for both tent-camping and car or van camping below.

How to choose and build the perfect festival camping vehicle

Who started Falls? Looking back on a past interview with Falls founder Simon Daly

Originally Falls Festival was founded by Simon Daly as Rock The Falls Festival back in 1993, and Daly was intent from the beginning to make Falls and his fellow festival contribution Lost Lands into pillars of festival organisation and sustainability. The festival has a certain intimate feel rarely felt in any other major events; maybe that’s because it’s still run in part by the Daly family, but it’s most likely the attention to detail the organisers put into it to ensure its continued growth and improvements. We spoke to Daly quite a while back about how one of Australia’s true cultural success stories first begun.

Daly dreamt up the Falls Festival when he was only 21 years old and the first ever Falls Festival was held on his parents’ farm in Lorne, where it continued to be held until this coming year. The first festival was really just a get-together, as Daly told us at the time: “It was something that had been in its infancy for a couple of years before that [the festival’s debut],” says Daly. “We always used to have a BBQ, sort of a mini bonfire camp thing just among friends in the years prior to that. On this one night, we all conspired to open up and invite a few more people up to the farm. That’s really where the beginnings of where the idea came to do something a bit different.”

The Falls Arts & Music Festival – as it’s officially known – has become an institution, a staple in the festival season calendar. Each year, festival-goers head out to the stunning locations to enjoy the ever-changing and growing party atmosphere that Falls fosters. With the best new talent, as well as much-loved favourites headlining the festival year-after-year, it’s no mystery why it’s consistently one of the most-loved and anticipated festivals on the calendar. Packing far more than just great bands, Falls is also renowned for its arts and comedy program.

“With the comedy, it’s always such a charming part of the festival because it’s held at the Grande Theatre and it’s between [music] acts and it’s a genuine spot – it’s not like a 10-minute token spot – it’s actually 50 minutes set aside,” says Daly. “It’s without a fail always one of the highlights of the festival… It’s just a really nice softening of the program where it allows music to shine and comedy to shine both equally.”

The arts section, for a long-time under the curatorial direction of Ian Pidd, has also grown to include a larger program. The Arts Village traditionally provided patrons with a range of activities and entertainment including circus workshops, puppetry, burlesque and comedy – its diversity is sure to satisfy a myriad of palettes. The Falls Fiesta was a famous optional dress-up occasion; the festival’s answer to a parade filled with dance and costumes. It’s safe to say, the future of the arts genre is bright as we look forward to future years, as is Falls Festival’s focus on breaking in new talent. What used to be called the APRA People’s Stage is now the Futures Stage, a chance for the greatest upcoming talent from Australia and abroad to strut their stuff at a major festival.

“We always used to have these acts that would perform out in the campground…they were literally patrons who had set up themselves on the campground and just done their own little side show,” Daly told us back in 2010. As such, a stage was set up for patrons with a penchant for performing. “We actually have the stage facing the bus stop, which takes about 3,000 people down to Lorne each day to enjoy the beaches. While they’re waiting in line to get on a bus, they’ve got the People’s Stage.”

Falls’ reputation for sustainability

When talking to Daly, what’s undeniable is the personal touch each member of the Falls Festival takes into creating the event, and none of this is more apparent than the festival’s commitment to sustainability and maintaining an eco-friendly event. The Daly family are from and still live in Lorne and as such, the importance of maintaining the beautiful landscapes of the region is a top priority.

Often, in most festivals and major events, recycling and non-recycling stations encourage patrons to throw their litter with more eco-efficiency. However, after visiting Visy Recycling, Daly was astonished to learn that if around five percent of a recycling load were contaminated with non-recycle waste, the load would be deemed trash, thus rendering the recycling efforts superfluous.

“It’s very easy to imagine people walking along in a festival and not quite getting their choice right and putting one item in the wrong bin and the whole load is contaminated,” explains Daly. “So we actually set up a whole sorting station similar to what we saw actually at Visy Plant itself, and do all the sorting on site.”

The Falls Festival has a green team that physically sorts through all the recyclable rubbish post-festivities to ensure that all recycled rubbish is a 100 percent clean. The other thing is their toilet facilities, which are sure to please the female demographic. Everyone, especially if you don’t own a willy, knows that festival loos are the armpits of a venue. The word ‘portaloo’ is enough to make eyes water and toes curl, and this was something that came to Daly’s attention through a rather personal encounter.

“Back in around 2000, my girlfriend at the time of only two or three weeks (but now wife) went into the ladies toilets and just couldn’t believe the state of them,” says Daly. “She went down to the house and grabbed a mop and broom and spent the entire New Year’s cleaning the loos. I just took note at that point.”

As such, the Falls Festival now hosts composting loos, which are not only eco-friendly since they’re waterless, but also often clean, spacious and odourless.

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“The actual loads can be returned back onto the ground once the worms and so on have gone through all the waste, which is really just the way of the future… So that’s been a great part of the festival and really helped not just as the green way to go, but it also makes it such a comfortable festival to be at,” explains Daly.

Being Green also means utilising generators that have B20 biodiesel going through them. “For us, when you’re living in such a beautiful environment, you’re a custodian of that environment and there’s a real responsibility to ensure that everything is not ending up in your oceans or waste streams unnecessarily. So, there’s always been that just growing up in that environment, a deep passion to make sure you leave something as you found it, but I think we’ve found ways to leave it in a better place than what it was, and at the same time, showing other people the way as well.”

The festival’s tie to the local community is also a strong and endearing relationship. Every year, the Falls Festival donates $16000 to the Lorne community fund. “We put the community in charge with discovering and thinking of ideas of how to spend that money, whether it be the elderly citizens or the younger ones or the primary school,” says Daly. “Consequently, already we’ve had in the last two years $33,000 spent in Lorne on a whole range of things. The nice thing about it is it has been shared between the elderly and the young and the middle aged of the community.”

Looking back on the growth of the festival from bonfire talk to one of Australia’s most popular arts and music events, the staggering revelation is that none of the successes was ever an expectation, nor was it ever planned.

“I don’t think I’ve ever lived too far ahead of myself,” says Daly. “It’s always had that feeling that the festival can control its own destiny and that kind of surety has allowed it to develop much more than two stages and music. And who knows where else it’ll head beyond there, and the amount of work we put into the green element of the festival as well.”

The Falls Art & Music Festival dedicates a large amount of time and effort into ensuring that the entire festival is as sustainable and environmentally friendly as possible. From flush-free composting toilets which save around two-and-a-half million litres of water each year to harvesting rain water for supply to the gas-fired onsite showers, all the measures have been taken to ensure as little impact on the environment is made as possible.

Falls has also previously teamed up the likes with BYO Bottle to cut down on the amount of single use bottles, meaning you can bring your own refillable drink bottle and refill it for free at one of the refill stations around the festival.

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Presale tickets are available from Monday 9 May, 9am – 9pm local times, sign up now via their website here to get first dibs. Tickets available 9am sharp local times on Thursday 12 May here.