SXSW Sydney cancels 2026 event, leaves Australia

15 January 2026

Eleanor Dickinson, writing for Mumbrella:

South by Southwest (SXSW) has cancelled its Sydney event — which has been held just three times — citing a “changing global environment that is impacting major events, festivals and cultural programs worldwide”.

Purely anecdotal, but one or two of the tech people on my social feeds, who attend such events, had described SXSW Sydney speaker lineups as “not too inspiring”, or words to that effect.

Despite this — from what I can gather — attendances at the past three Sydney events were not disappointing. The cancellation however seems tied to factors other than speaker lineups, and attendances though, with cost being one of them.

I wouldn’t have minded going to SXSW, but I would have preferred that be in Austin, in the US state of Texas, where the festival originated in 1987.

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