Artist Applications
Important - please read before applying.
WOMAD is the World of Music, Arts & Dance, an organisation founded by the musician Peter Gabriel in the UK in 1982.
WOMADelaide is the Australian WOMAD festival, presented annually in Adelaide over a long weekend. It began in 1992 and attracts around 20-25,000 people of all ages each day.
Tickets generally go on sale in August, with a first lineup/program announcement in October and a final announcement in November, after which the daily schedule is finalised.
The lineup usually features 70+ established and emerging, contemporary and traditional groups from across Australia and 25+ countries, in 100+ performances across 7 stages and 4 days. In addition, there are street theatre/site installation artists, workshops, the Taste the World cooking program, The Planet Talks environmental discussions, a KidZone and more.
View previous programs here. In the past few years, the festival has programmed Grace Jones, Florence + The Machine, Angelique Kidjo, PJ Harvey, Gilberto Gil, Ziggy Marley, Jose Gonzalez, Arrested Development, Sampa The Great and Khruangbin, to name a few, however the essence of the festival is to introduce new artists from around the world to a new audience, alongside the higher profile artists.
Artist Expressions of Interest
The next WOMADelaide will be held from Friday 5 – Monday 8 March 2027.
The lineup is curated by the festival’s programming team in Adelaide. Most decisions are made between July and October.
Broadly speaking, we aim to program a brand new, diverse mix of traditional and contemporary, original music (not covers) of a very high standard.
Commercial rock, opera and R&B are not usually featured, and a strong live show is important. The vast majority of performances are with live instrumentation, not ‘playback’ DJ + vox format.
If you are selected/invited to perform, we provide a performance fee, local accommodation, production/technical requirements including backline, marketing/publicity and ground transport hotel-venue-airport, etc. We also book and pay for/arrange the relevant travel (return flights, excess baggage and temporary entertainment visas).
Where an Australia-based or international promoter is producing a wider Australia-NZ tour, and we are buying in the Adelaide/NZ show/s, we provide a delivered/landed fee to the promoter, plus local accommodation, production/technical, marketing/publicity and ground transport. In this instance, the promoter is responsible for all travel arrangements and the delivered fee represents a pro rata, per city share of the performance fee, international and domestic flights, visa arrangements and per diems (meals expenses).
WOMADelaide also produces the international artist lineup for WOMAD AOTEAROA (New Zealand), which is held the weekend after WOMADelaide (Friday 12 - Sunday 14 March 2027) in New Plymouth, Taranaki, NZ.
The lineup announcements for both festivals are usually in October and November.
Please note –
- If you performed at the 2026 festival, you will not be considered. Return/repeat artists usually have a few years between visits.
- 500+ applications are received via this online portal and other approaches, in addition to the invitations/proposals developed and pursued directly by the programming team.
- You will receive an acknowledgment of your application. After that, no further emails will be sent unless more information is needed, or an invitation is forthcoming.
- Unfortunately, there is not enough time to service ongoing enquiries, or advise if you have not been successful.
- We do not take applications for workshops, Taste the World, The Planet Talks or KidZone.
- Links to download files via Dropbox/WeTransfer (or similar) will not be opened.
Thank you for understanding.