Featuring a line-up of more than 150 thinkers and artists – including Tim Minchin, Maria Ressa, Cory Doctorow and Pussy Riot’s Maria Alyokhina – the Festival returns with world-premiere art, provocative cinema, punk gigs and access to forbidden spaces.
Festival of Dangerous Ideas, presented by The Ethics Centre, opens today, Thursday 20 August, for its biggest edition yet, expanding beyond its traditional weekend format to 10 days of events across Sydney.
As the main weekend begins at Carriageworks, the Festival will unveil HEAP, a large-scale installation transforming the venue’s foyer into a landscape of earth, excavation and discovery. Across 22-23 August, audiences will be invited to step barefoot into 120 tons of dirt and dig to uncover 80 new works exploring dangerous ideas by Australian artists Brook Andrew, Aretha Brown, Keg de Souza, Tarryn Gill, Sophie Penkethman-Young, Tim Silver, EJ Son and HOSSEI.
Festival Director, Danielle Harvey, said “We’re heading into the largest festival since we started in 2009. Festival of Dangerous Ideas meets complexity head on and audiences are looking for access to the ideas that are shaping the world around us at a rapid rate. We’ve created 10 days where you can challenge, hold, laugh and dance with danger. This year that means that alongside ‘bear-poking’ talks and panels, we have punk bands and philosophy, banned books and dangerous films, and a Schools Day that puts students in the room with the ideas that will shape their future. What unites it all is a refusal to look away – from extremism, authoritarianism, the uncomfortable question of what it costs to speak and what it costs to stay silent."
Minister for Jobs and Tourism Steve Kamper said: “Critical thinking is the foundation of culture and creativity, which makes the Festival of Dangerous Ideas so important for Sydney’s cultural calendar. As the only festival of its kind in Australia, it brings together some of the brightest minds from around the globe for genuine discussion on the issues that matter most. Events like this define Sydney as not just the nation’s cultural capital, but its intellectual capital too.”
PROGRAM HIGHLIGHTS INCLUDE:
Tim Minchin will deliver the Festival’s Opening Night John Caldon Provocation, a new keynote on storytelling, music and satire as tools for defending a vibrant, free society. The celebrated Australian composer-lyricist, pianist, writer, comedian and actor will examine extremism, censorship and fear, while reflecting on his own career to ask what it means to speak, provoke, withdraw or stay silent in an age of pile-ons, brand protection and moral certainty.
Pussy Riot artist and activist Maria Alyokhina takes to the FODI stage with Political Girl, a fearless and darkly funny account of grassroots resistance and authoritarian power. Imprisoned for two years following Pussy Riot’s infamous punk prayer, Alyokhina later escaped Russia, in 2022, disguised as a food delivery courier. Set to a live score by Eric J. Breitenbach, the performance brings her extraordinary story of resistance to life.
Hedwig and the Angry Inch creator and queer icon, John Cameron Mitchell, will present a ferocious, funny and unfiltered masterclass on 'punk as action’, refusal and collective courage. Part provocation, part call to arms, the session invites audiences to stop playing it safe and embrace risk, noise and participation.
American economist and public intellectual, Glenn Loury, takes on the chilling effect of social shame and fear of cancellation, asking whether social consequences can be more powerful than formal censorship.
Scholar, Aftab Malik, invites audiences to radically reframe their understanding of Islam, challenging entrenched assumptions about the faith and how it is understood in the West. Meanwhile, journalist and political commentator Peter Beinart explores a profound reckoning within Jewish identity, examining challenges to long-held liberal values and raising questions about solidarity, identity and moral responsibility.
Palestinian-American historian, Ussama Makdisi, challenges the myth of ancient hatreds in the Middle East, tracing histories of pluralism and coexistence obscured by empire and occupation. Former Prime Minister, Malcolm Turnbull, and former Foreign Minister, Bob Carr, explore what it means for Australia to be sovereign in a dangerous world, while philosopher, Clive Hamilton, confronts the collision between nationalism, authoritarianism and climate action.
With individual appearances from Nobel Peace Prize laureate, Maria Ressa, digital rights activist, Cory Doctorow, Human Rights Watch Executive Director, Philippe Bolopion, philosopher, Hanno Sauer, psychologist, Jesse Bering and historian, Joanna Bourke, among keynotes already sold out, audiences still have the chance to see some of the Festival’s most in-demand thinkers as part of the Festival’s provocative panel program or via the live stream.
Bering, Bourke and Sauer interrogate the dangers of moral certainty in, Against Goodness; Mariia Alyokhina, Tim Minchin, John Cameron Mitchell and Brook Andrew ask whether truly dangerous art is still possible in, Killing Culture; while anthropologist, Ghassan Hage, author and journalist, David Leser and Professor Marcia Langton AO, examine nationhood, empathy and grievance in, Paranoid Nationalism.
Elsewhere in the panel program, investigative journalist and cult expert, Anke Richter, and cult survivor, Laura McConnell, unpack the seductive pull of belonging, belief and control in, How to Start a Cult; philosopher, Alexandre Lefebvre, journalist, Melissa Chan, and Ussama Makdisi ask what people find attractive in authoritarian regimes in, The Good Life State; while independent MP, Allegra Spender, former judge, Michael Pembroke, and investigative journalist, Pat Abboud, question whether claims of neutrality can themselves be dangerous in The Illusion of Impartiality.
Beyond the talks, the Festival’s expanded Dangerous Art program turns ideas into physical encounters, from Branch Nebula’s, Exposure with performance artists Latai Taumoepeau and Mirabelle Wouters, and the digital fever dream placing you inside the internet in FAKE, to participatory dance performance, Deep Soulful Sweats, from Sarah Aiken and Rebecca Jensen and intimate one-person church service, And Also With You, by Simon Vaughn.
The Festival heads to Dendy Newtown for Dangerous Films: Old Reels, New Revelations, where a series of provocative films will be screened with introductions from leading thinkers offering a contemporary perspective on each work. The program includes: Knife: The Attempted Murder of Salman Rushdie, Zero Dark Thirty, Gojira (Godzilla), Salò (120 Days of Sodom), Shortbus and The Piano, with introductions from Simon Longstaff, Todd Sampson, Danielle Celermajer, Jane Mills, Denton Callander and Alecia Simmonds.
Across Sydney, Dangerous Excursions: Forbidden Access takes audiences behind closed doors and into spaces within cultural institutions that are rarely open to the public, unlocking restricted archives, collections and laboratories for intimate encounters with the people and ideas inside them.
At Heaps Normal Health Club, Marrickville, Meltdown turns up the volume with a one-night celebration of punk and counterculture, bringing together: Neptune Power Federation, Porcelain Alice, Ponzi Scheme and Mac the Knife for live and unapologetic dissent.
Across 21–23 August, an expanded free program at Carriageworks includes HEAP, Festival favourite, Circle of Chairs, artist talks, a communal choir, an onsite bookshop, public activations and DJs Aunty Jonny, Luke M de Zilva and Charlie Villas.
The extended Festival continues through to 30 August, with workshops at The Ethics Centre tackling everything from difficult conversations and workplace conflict to filing Freedom of Information requests and using AI without losing autonomy.
Festival of Dangerous Ideas runs from 20–30 August 2026 across Sydney. Tickets to remaining Festival events are on sale now at festivalofdangerousideas.com.
Festival of Dangerous Ideas is presented by The Ethics Centre, a not-for-profit that aims to bring ethics to the centre of everyday life. The Festival is supported by the NSW Government through Create NSW and Destination NSW, with returning principal partner JobLink Plus NSW.