Pulped: No budget for free Adelaide Festival headliner
Adelaide Festival has released its new program but organisers claim they received no government funding to plug the hole left by a cancelled Italian opera. Controversial author Randa Abdel-Fattah makes a return.
The 2027 Adelaide Festival revealed today includes 100 events but no show-stopping headliner after a $20 million opera was cancelled in June.
Last year’s festival opened with a big, free concert headlined by Britpop legends Pulp – the latest in a long tradition of free or ticketed open-air events.
The event nearly did not happen after Pulp frontman Jarvis Cocker raised concerns about the removal of Palestinian-Australian author Randa Abdel-Fattah from the 2026 Writers’ Week lineup. Abdel-Fattah will also return in 2027.
But artistic director Matthew Lutton said several factors, including “the feedback from government was that the funds weren’t available”, stopped a free headliner from being a part of this year’s program.
The 2027 program was supposed to be headlined by ticketed Italian opera AIDA, hailed as a “historic event” for being the first time the 800-person and 100-piece orchestra left Verona and made its international debut in Adelaide.
When AIDA was cancelled in June, a state government spokesperson said no taxpayer dollars were paid to AIDA.
Asked about the gap in the programme by InReview, Lutton said after AIDA’s cancellation he took a “very exciting project forward” as a free event to fill the gap for 2027 but was unsuccessful in receiving support.
“[That’s] the challenge of it being something we don’t have ongoing support to do, but have to seek it out annually,” Lutton said about festival funding.
The festival receives a baseline operating budget of about $9 million, and requests additional grants to bring certain headline events to Adelaide.
A state government spokesperson said today that “any suggestion that the government has not provided additional funding for a 2027 Adelaide Festival centrepiece is wrong”.
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“For each successive Adelaide Festival since 2024 and for the 2027 event, we have delivered investment above and beyond the festival’s annual operating grant of approximately $9 million to enable the festival to deliver innovative drawcard events that ensure its position as the nation’s most preeminent arts festival continues,” the spokesperson said.
“These additional investments total almost $5 million and (support the cost of) Little Amal, Pulp, and the centrepiece opera for 2027, Bluebeard’s Castle.
“All requests for additional events funding go through a rigorous process of assessment before recommendations are made for funding. Every year proposals are put forward that don’t progress due to a variety of reasons, including logistics, availability of acts, timing and benefit analysis.
“Any events funding which is not used is reinvested in other drawcard events.”
Lutton, Adelaide Festival board chair Judy Potter and Adelaide Writers’ Week director Rosemarie Milsom announced the 2027 program at Adelaide Town Hall this morning.
At the same time on Tuesday morning, Premier Peter Malinauskas announced the MotoGP Adelaide Street Circuit received an environmental green light to start works.
No government representative was present at the Adelaide Festival announcement, which clashed with the Premier’s MotoGP announcement and coincided with a parliamentary sitting week.
Adelaide Festival Board chair Judy Potter said she was “not fussed” by the clash, and had been “texting Kyam [Maher] all morning”, who apologised for missing the press conference due to parliament and planned to attend the Adelaide Festival’s launch event on Tuesday evening.
“I think they have full confidence in myself and the board, and we are working with [the government] …they care deeply about this festival,” Potter said.
“We’re also working with them on what is, you know, we’ve had increased costs, so what might be the funding going forward.
“They value the festival as much as I do.”
Randa Abdel-Fattah’s Writers’ Week return
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Palestinian-Australian author Randa Abdel-Fattah will return to the 2027 Adelaide Writers’ Week – part of the festival that imploded this year after Abdel-Fattah’s removal from the lineup, which led to an author boycott and the resignation of the former Adelaide Festival board.
After the storm that followed her placement and subsequent removal, Abdel-Fattah accepted the reinstated invitation from the new board and newly-appointed Writers’ Week Director Rosemarie Milsom.
She will appear in a conversation called Between the Lines alongside French Moroccan author Leïla Slimani.
Moderated by journalist and presenter Jan Fran, the session will be hosted at Adelaide Town Hall on March 3 – nearly one year to the day since Abdel-Fattah appeared in front of a sold-out Town Hall alongside former Writers’ Week director Louise Adler as part of the alternative Constellations Writers’ Festival.
Asked about Abdel-Fattah’s role on the lineup today, Premier Peter Malinauskas said: “I think we’ve been around this one a few times, I have always argued the case that when we see events, particularly like Writers’ Week, that we see them occurring in a way that facilitates the views of all people, not just some”.
“Having said that, the decision about who appears at them or not is entirely a matter for the board, and it has always been their judgment and their judgment alone, and they’ll have to account for it,” Malinauskas said.
Abdel-Fattah will only appear at Town Hall, and not at any other sessions at the Pioneer Women’s Garden where other free Writers’ Week panels are held.
Grilled by reporters about Abdel-Fattah’s place on the lineup today, Milsom said: “The decision to put Randa’s event in the Town Hall was because we expect a significant audience”.
“She’s appearing alongside an award-winning international writer. I think it’s going to be a really dynamic conversation, and I wanted there to be capacity, and also, come on, it’s the bottom line – budget is an issue.”
Writers’ Week had a record-breaking 160,000 attendees in 2025 – the event’s 40th year – over the six days, but as a free festival its economic impact is not recorded.
The broader 2026 festival sold around half the number of tickets as its 2025 predecessor.
Asked if SA Police was consulted regarding the security of Abdel-Fattah and attendees, a festival spokesperson said “AF engages with SAPOL in relation to the entire festival program as a routine matter”.
Also on the snapshot of the Writers’ Week lineup announced today is headliner Min Jin Lee, Korean American author of the bestselling historical epic Pachinko, and a string of high-profile international authors.
This includes A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius author Dave Eggers appearing in conversation with Trent Dalton and Caro Claire Burke, whose time-travelling, ‘trad-wife’ satirising debut Yesteryear has proved one of the year’s most hyped novels.
The ticketed program also includes an evening dedicated to the memory of Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell survivor Virginia Roberts Giuffre, featuring Amy Wallace, the American journalist who helped Giuffre tell her story in the bestselling Nobody’s Girl.
Headlining the festival’s visual arts program is the Australian premiere of Solitude by Sydney-based artist Khaled Sabsabi.
It will be Sabsabi’s first major solo exhibition in Australia since he appeared as Australia’s entry at the 2026 Venice Biennale – which became the subject of international controversy after Creative Australia rescinded, and then reinstated, Sabsabi’s commission in what was one of 2025’s biggest arts controversies.
Adelaide Festival 2027 runs from February 26 – March 14. The full Writers’ Week lineup will be announced in January.
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