After 13 extraordinary years of red dirt, big skies and even bigger music line-ups, the Birdsville Big Red Bash will return to the edge of the Simpson Desert from 6-8 July 2027 for an emotional final celebration, with organisers today announcing that next year will be the final Birdsville Big Red Bash.
The festival’s farewell line-up is a roll call of Australian music royalty, with Missy Higgins, Hoodoo Gurus, Leo Sayer, Kate Ceberano, The Living End, Birds of Tokyo, Jessica Mauboy, Shannon Noll, 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 and Gypsy Lee set to perform on one of the most extraordinary stages on earth.
The final Big Red Bash will be a celebration of everything the event has come to represent: music, family, adventure and unique Outback fun, and the sheer determination required to put on a major festival in one of the most isolated corners of Australia.
Renowned as the world’s most remote music festival, the Big Red Bash has forged a path for large-scale Outback events, attracting tens of thousands of people to Birdsville since it began in 2013.
But after battling site inundation from a huge outback rain event in early 2026 that led to the cancellation of the 2026 event, rising costs, recent weather challenges and the extraordinary logistical demands of staging a festival at the world’s most remote festival site, the Donovan family – who founded and run the bucket list event – have made the difficult decision to call time on the Big Red Bash.
Founder and Managing Director of the Outback Music Festival Group, Greg Donovan, said the decision had been deeply emotional but was necessary to protect the family-run business and its team.
“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. 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,” said Greg Donovan.
“It breaks my heart to have to walk away from an event that was founded on something so deeply personal to our family – fund raising 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.”
The decision to make the 2027 Big Red Bash the event finale follows the cancellation of the event in March this year after once-in-a-generation outback rainfall inundated the Big Red Bash site. At the time of the cancellation the 2026 Bash was 90% sold out and well on its way to a full sell out ahead of its July 2026 dates. The Outback Music Festival Group provided ticketholders with the option of refunds or retaining their tickets which became valid for the 2027 festival.
Around 6 feet of water from this inundation remains across parts of the event site, but organisers and Birdsville locals are confident the water will evaporate by February 2027, and the ground will dry up well before the final festival is staged in July 2027.
Organisers are backing that confidence and local knowledge with scientific modelling and Bureau of Meteorology evaporation data for the region – that regularly experiences 40+ degree days across summer months – and will put tickets on sale on November 12 with the option of full payment or a deposit and further instalments due from March 2027. Full refunds will be made if the event cannot proceed.
“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. And we’re backing this with scientific data on evaporation rates in the region from the BOM – which calculate 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,” added Greg Donovan.
Donovan said that the decision to make 2027 the final Big Red Bash event was made all the more difficult by the importance of the Bash to Birdsville, surrounding communities, suppliers, local businesses and charity partners.
“As a family we feel very sad and emotional that the Big Red Bash chapter is coming to an end,” he said.
“It’s something that we took a leap of faith with and poured our hearts and souls into building from scratch, based on a crazy idea in a remote and challenging location. A lot of our blood, sweat and tears have been spilled on that land. I gambled our family house and all my redundancy payout to make the event happen, and it has been an unexpected but magical journey.
“It will probably sound like a crude analogy, but I feel like it conveys the depth of emotion and how torn we feel to say that calling time on the Big Red Bash feels like having to put down the family dog at the end of its life. It’s something that you love unconditionally, and which has been a loyal companion and a major part of the family for such a long time – but you know the decision is the right one.”
Despite the sadness, Donovan said the family was grateful to have the chance to give the Big Red Bash the farewell it deserved.
“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.”
The Bash has welcomed a sold-out crowd of up to 11,000 people each year, with almost 60 per cent travelling from interstate and some attending from overseas. Across its history, it has attracted more than 78,000 people to the Queensland Outback, took out top honours with a Gold award in the National Festivals and Events category at the 2025 Australian Tourism Awards, generated annual tourism spending of more than $20 million and raised up to $400,000 each year for charity partners the Royal Flying Doctor and Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation.
Some of the biggest names in Australian rock history have also hit the remote Outback stage – with the legendary John Williamson the first ever performer with an acoustic set on the side of the Big Red sand dune in 2013, followed by a roll-call of storied acts including Midnight Oil, Jimmy Barnes, John Farnham, Paul Kelly, Kasey Chambers, Missy Higgins, Icehouse, The Angels, Jon Stevens, James Reyne, Hoodoo Gurus, Daryl Braithwaite, The Living End, Tina Arena, Colin Hay, Troy Cassar-Daley, Ian Moss, Richard Clapton, Ross Wilson, Vanessa Amorosi, Lee Kernaghan and many more.
“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.”
The final event will also mark the end of an era for the festival’s dedicated team, the Brook family, whose organic farmland has hosted the event, traditional land owner Don Rowland and the many Birdsville locals, as well as the event crew, volunteers, contractors, artists, volunteers and suppliers who have helped bring the Bash to life.
“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,” Greg Donovan said.
“Our focus now is on making 2027 a very special final celebration with everyone who has been part of its story.”
Tickets for the Birdsville Big Red Bash go on sale from 10am AEDT on November 12 with unprecedented demand expected.
Event details:
What: 2027 Birdsville Big Red Bash – Final Edition
Where: Big Red sand dune, 35 km West of Birdsville
When: July 6-8, 2027
More info & tickets: www.bigredbash.com.au (tickets released November 12, 2026 @ 10 AEDT with a $100 deposit that is refundable if the event doesn’t go ahead)
Full 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.