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It’s almost glow time in Adelaide! As the nights get a little cooler and darker, Australia’s festival capital is warming up to host its most spectacular winter light festival to date!
Literally and figuratively lighting up the city from July 1 to 19, Illuminate Adelaide will showcase more than 100 experiences spanning art, music, games and food. The 2026 headline act is Augmented Games – an Australian-first, large-scale interactive gaming experience by global creative studio, Moment Factory. In their largest project to date, the techno-masterminds will transform the Ridley Centre at Adelaide Showground into a life-size arcade, with not a single gaming controller in sight. Instead, you’ll be the joystick, moving your body to compete in a series of high-intensity multiplayer games.
Beyond the augmented arena, visitors can step into a reimagined parallel universe at Night Visions. Returning to Adelaide Botanic Garden for yet another year, this multi-sensory light trail features cutting-edge lasers, vivid projections and mystical soundscapes, split across six goosebump-inducing zones.
The journey continues next door at Adelaide Zoo, where visitors will be transported to a prehistoric world for the third and final instalment of Universal Kingdom: Ice Age. This family-friendly experience pairs magical light installations with spectacular puppetry, bringing to life everything from woolly mammoths and sabre-toothed tigers to towering dinosaurs.
If a free night out is what’s in your budget right now, Illuminate Adelaide has got you covered. The entirely free City Lights program will sprawl across the CBD with its biggest trail ever, featuring more than 50 interactive projections and large-scale artworks. Think a piano walk played by your own footsteps, a giant glowing chess board and an ogre-sized bear with laser beam eyes.
Once you’ve worked up an appetite, you can follow the glow to one of 30-plus local restaurants and bars hosting special Illuminate-inspired menus. Then kick on with a gig from the festival’s Unsound program, including a one-off immersive club experience headlined by South Sudanese-Australian DJ, Skin On Skin.
Trust us, this festival is worth breaking your winter hibernation for. You can explore the full Illuminate Adelaide program here.