09-07-2025
Brand new Aussie music festival announces 2026 tour dates… but can it save the country's failing industry?
Metalcore band Parkway Drive has announced a new music festival, and it could be the big break the live music scene has been waiting for.
Park Waves Festival is coming to Australia in 2026 and will bring a slew of artists to cities across the country.
Between February and March, the heavy metal music gig will do a full lap of the map, kicking off in Perth, then Adelaide, several locations in Victoria and NSW, Byron Bay, and Sandstone Point, Queensland.
Parkway Drive, who recently played a special 'black tie' event at the Sydney Opera House, tested the waters with their festival format in Europe last year, taking Fit For A King and Thy Art Is Murder to Germany for a head-banging night of music.
Popular music festivals have been dropping like flies over the past year, with Listen Out being the latest casualty of Australia's dwindling music scene.
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The annual Australian festival, which has been held in Sydney, Perth, Melbourne and Brisbane since September 2013, will not go ahead for 2025.
The team behind the event shared the sad news in an Instagram post on Monday.
'Okay... deep breath. This one's tough. Listen Out won't be going ahead this year,' the post read.
'We've always tried to build something special where the lineup reflects the culture and the energy flows both ways between the artists and you,' it continued.
'The last few years have been tough. So, we're hitting pause on Listen Out as you know it. But we're not going anywhere.'
The festival will take a new form, called Listen Out Presents, which will involve 'one-off carefully curated parties in killer locations around Australia all year long'.
'We're still here for the good times... just in a new way. We're not saying anything else... for now,' the social media post read.
The first of these events is set to take place in Perth in the near future, featuring 'some of the best artists in the world'.
Listen Out is one of many festivals that have faced the axe in a spate of cancellations in the past year.
R'n'B festival Souled Out was cancelled in February, with all three shows in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane dropped.
Victorian event The Esoteric Psychedelic Circus Festival was also canned.
Likewise, organisers announced earlier this year that Splendour in the Grass will not be returning in 2025.
