Lock it in (and start planning now!)
SXSW Sydney has announced that the dates for the 2025 edition of the event (their third) will be happening 13-19th October 2025, which runs the full Monday to Sunday.
If memory serves, that’ll make it the first year that officially runs right up to the Sunday – in 2024, the final day’s activities were a bit of an add-on, with a bunch of music shows open to the public as well as to badge and wristband holders.
It also means that there is no break before work starts again on Monday, so I suspect there’ll be an increase in the number of folk to booking an extra day off this year, if only to recover.
As the site says, applications for the music festival component will start “in early 2025”, and if you’re an artist, this will come round sooner than you think!
If you’re interested in applying to play at SXSW Sydney next year, it’s worth spending some time over the Australian summer thinking about what you’ll be doing next year and how you might build up towards appearing in October. SXSW Sydney is, at heart, a professional industry event so it’s important to be serious about the business of your music as well as the creativity of your work when you apply.