Brisbane Festival 2025 opens with Riverfire flyover and fireworks

A Royal Australian Air Force EA-18G Growler from No 6 Squadron, RAAF Base Amberley, conducts a flying display over the Brisbane CBD for Riverfire 2025. Spectators lined both sides of the river to see the event. Photo / CPL Emma Schwenke

After dark, fireworks launched from multiple pontoons, buildings and bridges. No matter your position along the river, you were in the middle of the display. It was the ultimate surround sound-and-light show.

The river is at the heart of both Brisbane and its festival, ferrying people on boats, bikes, scooters and feet (both sides are fully pedestrianised throughout the central city) to various venues along its banks.

Inflatable sculptures created by Craig & Karl decorate the Kangaroo Point Bridge during the Brisbane Festival 2025. Photo / Supplied

In September, its pedestrian bridges are transformed by the festival’s signature visuals; brilliant, bold, brightly coloured artworks, installations and inflatable sculptures created by expatriate Brisbane artists Craig & Karl, in collaboration with digital artist David McLeod. They’re a celebration of colour and quirk, embodying the festival vibe: fun, arresting, edgy. As well as flanking bridges, the artworks appear in windows and on street corners throughout the city.

Craig & Karl sculptures on a balcony at Griffith University. The artworks appear throughout Brisbane during the festival. Photo / Supplied

A public art trail app guides viewers to each installation, though visitors might prefer the joy and surprise of accidental discovery as they wander.

The 23-day festival boasts more than 100 events in more than 40 venues. Dance is a particularly strong offering. International acts include LA Dance Project, Club Guy and Roni, and the Netherlands’ ISH Dance Collective, who will perform Elements of Freestyle, an “adrenaline-fuelled explosion of extreme urban sports, dance, music and theatre” in the final weekend.

Performances centering First Nations stories include Baleen Moondjan, The Boodong’s Song and Breaking Ground. The most original offering has to be Dance Battle of the Burbs, a slightly satirical dance-off by The Common People Dance Project Eisteddfod where, “dressed in sequined armour, the mighty suburban gladiators will meet on neutral territory and dance it out”. The Common People Dance Project also hosts dance workshops throughout the festival – free for anyone keen to try.

Competitors in the Common People Dance Eisteddfod. Photo / Supplied.

One standout from the opening weekend was Back to Bilo, a “verbatim” play in which the lines spoken by the actors are drawn from real life and interviews. Within the scenes, reportage, lighting, archival footage and the stunning vocals of Menaca Thomas come together to tell the story of Sri Lankan refugees Nades and Priya. The couple, who met in Australia, made their home in a small town in regional Queensland and started a family there before being taken into detention during a dawn raid. Horrified, Biloela locals from all walks rallied around the family, advocating for their release over the four years they were held in Australian detention centres. The advocacy grew to a nationwide fight to bring them home.

Priya on the boat to Australia in a scene from the new play “Back to Bilo” performed at the Brisbane Festival 2025. Photo / Morgan Roberts

Another standout was Gatsby at the Green Light. Riffing off Fitzgerald’s ambience, more than his story, it is an energetic and immersive spectacle. With some of the audience seated in the bar of the set, before the show the cast mixes and serves them drinks. After the first dance number, the bar converts into a stage on which the cast juggles, tap-dances, strip-teases and aerial-tricks their way through Gatsby and Daisy’s tragic but glitzy love story.

A scene from “Gatsby at the Green Light” at the Brisbane Festival 2025. Photo / Morgan Roberts

Not confined to theatres, the festival spills outdoors. Every night at the walk-through sound-and-light installation, Afterglow, thousands of flames illuminate the city’s botanic gardens in a “slow-burn multisensory journey”. Some of the soundscapes are enhanced by the local fruit bats. There is also marshmallow toasting and, of course, a bar, hospitality being one of Brisbane’s claims to fame, and with good reason – though that’s another story.

During the opening weekend, outdoor community “mini” festivals from several of Brisbane’s diverse ethnic communities offered food, workshops, music and entertainment. Indian cooking, Italian music, a celebration of 50 years of Papua New Guinean independence, and the chance to try Pacific art at Pacifica Made were all on offer.

Hundreds of drones soar above the Brisbane River as Traditional Owner Yuggera and Toorabul man Shannon Ruska and Tribal Experiences retell “Nieergoo: Spirit of the Whale” during the 2023 Brisbane Festival.

The festival will wrap up as it began, with light shows above the river. Skylore: Nieergoo – Spirit of the Whale is now in its third annual iteration. As hundreds of drones fly above the city, Shannon Ruska and Tribal Experiences will return to tell a powerful story of culture, country and connection to place and to celebrate Brisbane city.

The writers travelled courtesy of the Brisbane Festival.