After a run of festivals marked by challenges including extreme heat, overcrowding and Covid restrictions, this was the WOMADelaide festival everyone needed: warm days, pleasant nights and plenty of room to move even when the headline acts hit the Foundation Stage made this a Goldilocks long weekend where everything felt just right.

At least that was the audience experience. The production team pulled off a miracle by working until the last minute to navigate myriad cancelled and rescheduled flights bring artists drawn from 37 countries to the festival. When the gates to Botanic Park opened on Friday afternoon, several musicians were still winging their way towards Adelaide. It meant that festivalgoers needed to wait an extra day to see Ghana’s Alogte Oho & His Sounds of Joy, who lived up to their name with several sets of exuberant horn- and synth-laden Afrofuturist gospel.

Fortunately, there were plenty of other acts to enjoy on Friday, and the combination of percussive Caribbean gaita flutes, rapid fire anti-fascist raps and “metal cumbia” made Colombian trio La Perla an early festival highlight. Roberto Fonseca returned to WOMADelaide after twelve years with his sparkling Cuban jazz and Ganna incorporated the traditional folk songs of her native Ukraine and the looped electronics of her home in Berlin into a polyphonic cascade of vocals. Representing the oft-forgotten second portion of WOMADelaide’s World Of Music And Dance, Rosas Danst Rosas saw four energetic dancers layering quotidian movements onto one another as they harnessed the power of repetition and variation to create a hypnotic spectacle that acted as a visual analogue to techno.

On Saturday, soul singer Jalen Ngonda toasted the sunset with a joyous falsetto before Yothu Yindi returned to the stage 33 years after their first appearance and played a high-energy set that culminated in mass singalongs to ‘Djapana’ and ‘Treaty’. But the night belonged to Grace Jones, who kept the crowd waiting for 20 minutes before beginning her set on a giant throne. At 77 years of age, she still knows how to command a stage, and her stream of consciousness banter (“I need to pee; does anyone have an ice bucket?”) suggested she hasn’t forgotten how to party. Her bass section must have been audible throughout most of St Peters, but anyone listening from home would have missed the dozen or so costume changes, which ranged from high fashion outfits to a mirrorball helmet before she performed ‘Slave to the Rhythm’ with a glittering silver hula hoop and a hat resembling a giant red orchid hood.

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But as happens every year, many of the standout performances took place far from the main stage. Džambo Aguševi Orchestra burst onto the stage in a flurry of Balkan brass with a hint of swing before Kenya’s Blinky Bill highlighted the artificiality of genre barriers with an uptempo mix of rap, R&B and Afrobeat that would sit happily on most commercial radio stations in this country. Åkervinda cast a series of Swedish witch spells on festivalgoers as four unaccompanied voices swirled around each other like tendrils of mist on a lonely mountaintop, while Badbadnotgood delivered a dense mix of jazz, funk and instrumental hip-hop against a backdrop of 35 mm b-roll.

The variety on offer across WOMADelaide’s four days is such that every attendee will have their own highlights, but nobody who saw Xylourides will forget the performance any time soon. This trio of siblings updated the outlaw image of their grandfather Psarantonis with speed dealer sunnies, black tees and jeans, but stayed true to the musical traditions of Crete’s fiercely independent mountain dwellers. Droning Cretan lute, sinuous melodies on the bowed lyra and insistent percussion combined with three-part vocal harmonies to send the audience into a trance that culminated in a frenetic, ecstatic crescendo as a traditional siganos circle dance turned into a circle pit worthy of the siblings’ hardcore band Frenzee.

Xylourides’ appearance at WOMADelaide 13 years after their grandfather was just one thread in a festival-wide theme of familial dialogue. Yothu Yindi was led by founding member Dr Yunupingu’s grandson and saw original members sharing the stage with their extended family, while Tanzania’s aunt/niece duo The Zawose Queens wowed with a high-energy set of mbira-led grooves and showstopping dance moves more than three decades after their father/ grandfather Dr Hukwe Zawose appeared at the third WOMADelaide festival. Not to be outdone, gospel funk powerhouse Annie Caldwell brought three generations of her family onstage for a disco-tinged set that would have sounded less than devotional if Jesus’ name had been replaced with any other man’s.

Away from the stages (which are now powered by 100% renewable energy), there were plenty of reminders that WOMADelaide encompasses far more than music and dance. Mornings started with gentle yoga beneath the sprawling Moreton Bay figs before segueing into the Planet Talks, where Don Watson skewered Anthony Albanese’s “fatalistic timidity masquerading as pragmatism”. The presence of extravagant hair artists Osadia added to the throwback feel across the weekend, and volunteers sporting fabulously over-the-top hairdos including a cutlery mohawk stood out even in the colourfully dressed crowds.

By the time conscious hip-hop pioneers Arrested Development closed out the Foundation Stage on Monday night, it was no surprise to see smiles all around. Their feel-good set mixed old and new material, but went heavy on positivity and teased Everyday People several times before finally inviting everyone to dance the weekend away. It was the final salvo in a broadside of love and goodwill that acted as a much-needed antidote to the heaviness dominating global news headlines, and a reminder of how fortunate we are to have this remarkable festival.

WOMADelaide 2026 ran from March 6 – 9 at Botanic Park