This week marks the start of one of Australia’s most disruptive festivals. The premise behind Sydney’s Festival Of Dangerous Ideas hasn't changed much since launching in 2009: bring people with fairly opposed views in a room together and see what happens. Originally a venture between The Ethics Centre and the Sydney Opera House, the festival has since moved to the Carriageworks in Redfern, with former guests including Naomi Klein, Roxane Gay, Masha Gessen, Steven Pinker and Frances Haugen.
The 2026 edition, centred around the theme of Revelation, is the biggest yet, running for ten days across three new strands: art, film and excursions into archives not normally open to the public. And while most of the main programme has already sold out, the organisers have opened select sessions to livestream or watch on-demand, so a handful of the bigger ideas are able to travel beyond Carriageworks – for those who prefer couch-centric dissent.
Here are the five events we’re most looking forward to.
1. Governing In The Age Of Stupid – Waleed Aly, Paul Kelly, Amy Remeikis, Hannah Ferguson
Saturday 22 August, 10am
Another chorus of voices, this time a political columnist, a veteran newspaper editor and two of Australia’s sharper younger commentators, who sit down to work out why liberal democracy feels stuck – not just in one country but as a system. While there are many single leaders to blame, this is more of an autopsy of the machinery around all of them. Sold out in person, livestream available.
2. Weapons of Mass Distraction – Maria Ressa
Saturday 22 August, 4.30pm
Maria co-founded Rappler, the Philippine outlet that has spent a decade tracking state-sponsored disinformation and won the Nobel Peace Prize for it in 2021. She now co-chairs the UN's scientific panel on AI. Her argument at the festival is that the coup no longer needs tanks – once our beliefs are controlled, democracy itself becomes the casualty. Sold out in person, livestream available.
3. Killing Culture – Maria Alyokhina, Tim Minchin, John Cameron Mitchell, Sisonke Msimang, Brook Andrew
Saturday 22 August, 6pm
Can art can still challenge power now that culture itself has become the battleground, rather than a space set apart from one? On stage that means an exiled Russian punk-protest artist, an Australian comedian who has built a career on saying the thing you’re not meant to say, the American director behind Hedwig And The Angry Inch and Shortbus, a South African essayist and an Indigenous Australian visual artist, each presenting their arguments about what art is allowed to do. Get tickets here. Livestream available.
4. Enshittification – Cory Doctorow
Sunday 23 August, 12pm
Cory’s term for platform decay has since shown up on multiple dictionaries’ word-of-the-year shortlists – one way to track cultural permeability in 2026. His new book The Reverse Centaur's Guide to Life After AI: How To Think About Artificial Intelligence Before It’s Too Late prompted Brian Eno to say of Cory’s work: “Cory Doctorow is the most lucid and generous guide I know of, and this book – ostensibly about AI, but more broadly about the new world of hyper-capitalism and high tech – is stunning in its clarity and breadth of vision.” Sold out in person, livestream available.
5. Pussy Riot’s Political Girl – Maria Alyokhina
Sunday 23 August, 6.00pm
This Maria served two years in a Russian penal colony for performing Virgin Mary, Banish Putin inside Moscow’s Cathedral of Christ the Saviour. In 2022, facing a new sentence, she left the country disguised as a food courier. This session will be a live account of that very escape, scored by composer Eric J Breitenbach. This is very much not a panel. Tickets available here.
Full programme at festivalofdangerousideas.com
