After 13 years of bringing live music to the Big Red Dune in Queensland, the Birdsville Big Red Bash returns to the edge of the Simpson Desert for the final time from 6-8 July 2027.
For its farewell, the festival has locked in an abundance of Australian music royalty, including Missy Higgins, Hoodoo Gurus, Kate Ceberano, Leo Sayer, The Living End, Jessica Mauboy, The Whitlams, Troy Cassar-Daley, Jem Cassar-Daley, Birds of Tokyo, Shannon Noll, Tim Finn, Chocolate Starfish, and more.
While the Big Red Bash has attracted tens of thousands of attendees to its festival grounds since its beginnings in 2013, recent years have seen the beloved event inundated with setbacks.
This year’s event was cancelled after huge amounts of heavy rain fell on the site, which made it unsafe to go ahead.
With recent weather challenges, rising costs, and the logistical demands of putting on a festival in such a remote location compounding, festival founders, the Donovan family, have decided to end the Big Red Bash on a high.
“The Big Red Bash has been successful and financially viable – and we feel privileged that both our Bash events have consistently sold out since 2015,” said Founder and Managing Director of the Outback Music Festival Group, Greg Donovan. “But the ongoing outside pressures have ultimately led us to the conclusion that continuing at the remote Birdsville site is becoming difficult to sustain for the long term.”
Donovan continued, “It breaks my heart to have to walk away from an event that was founded on something so deeply personal to our family – fundraising for juvenile diabetes when our son was first diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes - but sadly it’s where we’re at.
“We’re 100% committed to our Mundi Mundi Plains site, where remote and Outback comes with a side of infrastructure, sealed roads and a town the size of Broken Hill that is well equipped to support us with accommodation and flights.”
At the time of publication, around six feet of water from the incredible amount of rain that fell earlier this year remains across parts of the festival site. Still, organisers and Birdsville locals are confident the water will evaporate in summer and dry up well before the Big Red Bash returns for one last go in July 2027.
“What I keep being told by locals who know the land is ‘she’ll be right mate’ – they’re confident in the water evaporation trajectory,” Donovan said. “And we’re backing this with scientific data on evaporation rates in the region from the BOM – which calculates that all the water will be evaporated by February 2027, even if there is further rainfall. We’ll even pump it out if we have to!
“We appreciate that people might be a little nervous about buying tickets; however, we’re so confident we’re going to go on sale in November after monitoring the evaporation for October, and we will be providing the option to pay a deposit to secure tickets, with further payments due from March 2027. With the limited capacity of the event capped at under 11,000, and it being the last ever on that site, we wouldn’t be surprised if it sells out fairly quickly.”
Tickets to the 2027 Birdsville Big Red Bash will be available from Thursday, 12 November, at 10 am AEDT. Organisers are expecting unprecedented demand, so make sure you get your hands on tickets ASAP.
More ticketing information is available on the Big Red Bash website.
Despite the heartbreak of saying goodbye to the festival the Donovan family loves unconditionally, Greg Donovan says they’re grateful for the opportunity to give the Big Red Bash a proper farewell.
“Many great music festivals have disappeared over the last few years without the opportunity to say goodbye properly by staging a final farewell event,” he said.
“We are very fortunate to be in a position to do that - to go out on our own terms rather than being forced out.”
Donovan continued, “While our numbers are relatively modest in terms of festival goers, we’ve always punched well above in terms of logistics and what the event delivers. We’ve created multiple World Records across Nutbush boot scooting at the event and Big Blue Day map of Australia, as well as delivering the most economic revenue to Outback Queensland of any event ever staged in the region.
“We were the world’s first multi-day music festival staged post Covid in 2021, and we rank consistently as having amongst the highest level of customer satisfaction of events staged in Queensland. It’s a lot to walk away from, but we’d rather go out on a high than risk the event being prevented from continuing by circumstances beyond our control.
“The Mundi Mundi Bash will become our sole focus moving forward, which will allow us to focus more on that event and will also give our loyal Bash patrons the opportunity to still experience everything that makes a Bash event special on another equally iconic red dirt location.”
His statement concluded, “We’re incredibly proud of what the Big Red Bash has achieved and deeply appreciate everyone who has worked together to help make it possible.
“Our focus now is on making 2027 a very special final celebration with everyone who has been part of its story.”
2027 Birdsville Big Red Bash – Final Edition
Line-up
Missy Higgins, Hoodoo Gurus, Leo Sayer, The Living End, Birds of Tokyo, Jessica Mauboy, Shannon Noll, Kate Ceberano, The Whitlams, Tim Finn, Troy Cassar-Daley, Chocolate Starfish, Ross Wilson, Furnace and the Fundamentals, 50 Years of Fleetwood Mac, Shane Howard, Wes Carr, Jem Cassar-Daley, Tom Busby & Gypsy Lee
6-8 July 2027 - Big Red Sand Dune, 35 km West of Birdsville
