Melbourne's biggest arts festival is burning bright through its second week, with RISING 2026 delivering an eclectic blend of live music, theatre, dance and immersive art right across the city.
From a late-night electro-goth takeover of Hamer Hall to a multi-sensory sound exhibition running through August, week two has something for everyone and a few things nobody could have predicted.
RISING 2026
- When: 27 May to 8 June 2026
- Where: Various venues across Melbourne
- Full program here
Check out our gig guide, our festival guide, our live music venue guide and our nightclub guide. Follow us on Instagram here.
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The theatrical action gets going early, with We Come to Collect: a flirtation, with capitalism already running at The Showroom, Arts Centre Melbourne through to 7 June.
Baltimore-based Jenn Kidwell and ASL artist Brandon Kazen-Maddox lead the 90-minute carnivalesque performance art-comedy, dismantling myths of American economic might beneath a crooked chandelier while pinballing between time, race, desire, shame and Flava Flav. Leopard-printed and unhinged in the best way, it’s consciousness-raising with a wink and a snarl.
From 2 June, actor Khalid Abdalla, known for The Crown and The Kite Runner, takes the stage at Merlyn Theatre, Malthouse with his one-man show Nowhere. Written and performed by Abdalla and directed by Omar Elerian, the 95-minute work weaves together the Egyptian revolution, colonial and decolonial history, and personal reflections on friendship, loss and Gaza into what the show calls an anti-biography, a reckoning with how we got here and how we find agency inside the mazes of history.
It runs through to 7 June, with a post-show Q&A following the 2pm matinee on 6 June.
Welsh songwriter Cate Le Bon and her band roll into Melbourne Town Hall on 3 June with the surrealist art pop of her latest album Michelangelo Dying. Groove-laden and lush, her sound sits somewhere between a smudged oil painting and a dream you’re still chasing by morning.
Melbourne-based songwriter Georgia Knight supports, playing cuts from her latest release Beanpole.
The following night, 4 June, TR/ST takes over Hamer Hall for his first-ever Australian tour. The Toronto project, now a solo outfit helmed by Robert Alfons, arrives with a mammoth live show spanning his full catalogue.
Cold wave and industrial influences run deep: glitching synths, dark bass throb and processed vocals that crawl from somewhere beneath the dancefloor. Support comes from Tokyo-via-Manhattan rapper and fashionista Nina Utashiro, who blends trap, pop and metal into sharp, bird’s-eye-view commentary on Japanese society.
Also on 4 and 5 June, Brooklyn-based performance artist Narcissister brings Voyage Into Infinity to Festival Hall, a 70-minute spectacle inside a warehouse-sized contraption of ladders, planks and precariously balanced objects, all set off by one swinging punching bag.
Part performance installation, part carnival ride into the unknown, it pays homage to Bad Brains and the controlled chaos of Rube Goldberg machines.
Friday 5 June is a big one. Seun Kuti & Egypt 80 bring Afrobeat to Hamer Hall, presenting material from their latest album Heavier Yet (Lays the Crownless Head). Seun picked up the baton of his father Fela’s legendary ensemble Egypt 80 at just 14 years old, and has since built a formidable reputation for explosive live shows driven by rapid-fire brass, syncopated grooves and sheer commanding presence. Naarm’s own Public Opinion Afro Orchestra open, presented in collaboration with PBS FM’s Stani Goma.
Across town at Melbourne Recital Centre the same night, Saul Williams Meets Carlos Niño & Friends brings together the legendary slam poet-turned-hip hop artist with LA percussionist-producer Carlos Niño and collaborators including Surya Botofasina and Aaron Shaw.
Recorded outdoors in Coldwater Canyon under black walnut trees and oaks, the set pushes Williams back past hip hop into older Black oral traditions, backed by electro-acoustic improvisation featuring shakers, gongs, chimes and woodwinds.
Day Tripper lands on 6 June, the beloved festival-within-a-festival returning to Melbourne Town Hall and Max Watt’s for eight hours across four stages and 20 acts. This year’s lineup pulls together Kae Tempest, Chanel Beads, Adrian Sherwood, Kahil El’Zabar, The Bats, Discovery Zone, The Congos and more, with balconies, backrooms, porticos and portals all thrown open for the occasion. One ticket, eight hours, no excuses.
Running across all of the above and well beyond it, The Vinyl Factory: REVERB is the multi-sensory exhibition at ACMI presented alongside RISING, running through to 31 August.
Originally staged at 180 Studios in London, it features immersive works by Stan Douglas, Jenn Nkiru, William Kentridge, Jeremy Deller, Virgil Abloh, Kahlil Joseph, Gabriel Moses, Cecilia Bengolea, Julianknxx and Carsten Nicolai, spanning everything from the origins of techno and house to Kingston’s dancehall scene and the late-80s second summer of love.
Expect a sculptural sound system, remixable vinyl loops, a six-hour jam film set inside a recreation of legendary New York studio The Church, and an archive of 100 pressings from Massive Attack, Grace Jones, Daft Punk and more.
The acoustically optimised Listening Room hosts weekly after-hours sessions, available by ballot for Reverb ticketholders, with RISING sessions curated by Triple R’s Yasmine Sharaf.
For more information, head here.
Beat is a proud media partner of RISING.
