Iconic Big Red Bash to end in 2027, with Missy Higgins and Hoodoo Gurus leading the farewell

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After 13 years of bringing some of Australia’s biggest music acts to the middle of the desert, the iconic Birdsville Big Red Bash has announced that its 2027 event will be its last.

The much-loved outback music festival will return to the edge of Queensland’s Simpson Desert from July 6 to 8, 2027, with a huge farewell line-up featuring Missy Higgins, Hoodoo Gurus, Leo Sayer, Kate Ceberano, The Living End, Birds of Tokyo and Jessica Mauboy.

They’ll be joined by 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.

Known as the world’s most remote music festival, the Big Red Bash has become a bucket-list experience for music lovers across Australia, attracting thousands of visitors to the spectacular red desert landscape outside Birdsville.

However, organisers have confirmed the 2027 event will mark the end of an era, with rising costs, unpredictable weather and the enormous logistical challenges of running a festival in such a remote location making its future increasingly difficult.

The announcement follows the cancellation of the 2026 festival, when extraordinary rainfall left the event site underwater. At the time, the festival was already 90 per cent sold out.

Founder Greg Donovan, whose family established the event in 2013, said the decision to bring the Big Red Bash to a close had been incredibly emotional.

“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,” he said.

The festival began as a deeply personal project for the Donovan family, initially raising funds for juvenile diabetes research following their son’s Type 1 diabetes diagnosis.

What started with an acoustic performance by John Williamson beside the famous Big Red sand dune in 2013 grew into one of Australia’s most recognised destination music festivals.

Over the years, its remarkable desert stage has welcomed legendary performers including John Farnham, Midnight Oil, Jimmy Barnes, Paul Kelly, Icehouse, Tina Arena, Kasey Chambers and Daryl Braithwaite.

More than 78,000 people have attended throughout its history, with the event generating more than $20 million in annual tourism spending and raising up to $400,000 each year for charity partners.

Despite the challenges, organisers are confident the festival site will be ready for one final celebration.

Around six feet of floodwater remains across parts of the site, but evaporation modelling indicates the water should disappear by February 2027, allowing the ground to dry before July.

The festival will have a limited capacity of fewer than 11,000 people, with strong demand expected for the final event.

Donovan said the family was grateful to have the opportunity to farewell the festival properly, rather than have it disappear without a final celebration.

“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.”

While the Birdsville chapter is coming to an end, the family’s other outback music event, the Mundi Mundi Bash near Broken Hill, will continue and become the organisation’s sole focus.

Tickets for the final Birdsville Big Red Bash go on sale at 10am AEDT on Thursday, November 12, 2026, with payment plans available. Organisers have confirmed full refunds will be provided if the event cannot proceed.