Steampunk NZ Festival

07/09/2026

The committee, crew and Steampunk NZ Festival community extend our heartfelt sympathy to David Sawyer and family today as they farewell a truly splendid lady – Jenni Bamber-Sawyer. There are no good words for this. We hope you feel our collective support though your sorrow. A most important cog in our Steampunk world. Rest in peace Jenni. 😢🎩
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1EvEYTVA5T/

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19/08/2026

Just one of the interesting things that happened in our quirky wee town of Oamaru. We are quite good at interesting things- Steampunk or otherwise. 🎩
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1CQxLTQhg2/?mibextid=wwXIfr

13/08/2026

Proudly waving our Steampunk NZ Festival Banner and showing off the 2027 Festival poster at the reopening of the Vanished World Museum in Duntroon today.

Many thanks to Waitaki Whitestone UNESCO Geopark for inviting us.

09/07/2026

Wow – thank you!

We have been absolutely overwhelmed by the kindness and offers of help from near and far following the flooding of our storage area and the damage to Festival props and décor. Steampunk Community – you are wonderful!

For now, our committee and regular crew will be managing a clean-up and assessment process over the weekend. As much as we appreciate every offer, we need to keep the number of people on site manageable while we work through what can be saved and what has been lost.

We may well call on some of our wonderfully creative Steampunk community in the future to help repair, recreate, and reimagine some of the Festival treasures.

Right now, however, our most urgent need is finding a new dry and secure storage/workshop space. If you know of any suitable premises that may be available, please get in touch.

Thank you again for your support, concern, and generosity. We are incredibly grateful to be part of such a caring and creative community. ❤️

Many folk in town are dealing with loss of property, homes and livelihood and while this certainly puts our loss into perspective, we do acknowledge the hours of collaborative community energy that is represented in our workshop and storage area.

05/07/2026

Steampunk NZ Festival is feeling devastated. Stormwater from the Wansbeck roundabout flooded our Festival storage area leaving a dirty tide mark 6 inches high through all of our Festival props, decor, materials and supplies.
The damage is heartbreaking and represents 1000’s of hours of volunteers hard work and love and is an enormous set back for our Festival planning and funds.
We have a small crew at work to sort as best we can today, but won’t be able to fully assess until things dry. There is a big cleanup ahead of us. We can see some ruined treasures amongst the debris and some areas we just can’t bear to look at yet.
We have been so grateful for this storage place, its handy location near the Precinct made a huge difference to pack in and pack out of Festival, saving so much time and energy for our crew but the reality is we need a new home urgently. If anyone knows of a suitable space our crew can use for storage, workshop please reach out. We will consider all options.

17/06/2026

More wonderful Steampunk people!

16/06/2026

Photos of fabulous Steampunk people looking splendid at this years Ball!

07/06/2026

POST FESTIVAL SURVEY - WE NEED YOUR FEEDBACK!

Greetings all, and thank you to everyone who joined us this year in Oamaru for Steampunk NZ Festival 2026 - Frontiers of Steam.

As always we ask your help to gather information that helps the Festival with reporting and recording, funding and grant applications and of course helps us keep fine tuning the Festival.

The link to the Festival Feedback form is here:
http://cogs.evildonald.org/steam/2026-steampunk-nz-festival-post-event-survey/

We are underway with planning for 2027 and hope to see many of you join us again!

Splendidly yours
Steampunk NZ Inc
Chair, Committee and Crew

Gathering information about Steampunk NZ Festival will help us create a great Festival next year. Your feedback also supports funding applications and helps us continue offering parades and free activities. We ask the questions in the exact way information is required for these funding applications....

04/06/2026

Huzzah! Look at this!

The small, rural town of Ōamaru, New Zealand, has become an unlikely world capital for the retro-futuristic genre of steampunk.

01/06/2026

The gates are down
The streets are clean
It’s almost like you’ve never been.
There are photos to come, and lots we’ve seen.
See you next year for ‘Stories of Steam’

Steampunk community, we’ve loved hosting you. You’ve been glorious, gracious, and gregarious. To the frequent attendees, it was wonderful to reconnect. To the first timers, we hope you felt welcome and included, and have gone home appropriately tired and inspired.

The committee and crew have had a record breaking pack down. We will be meeting this coming weekend to debrief and switch the focus to 2027.

‘Stories of Steam’
from page and screen.
Kings Birthday Weekend
June 3-7 2027

New venues, events, creative challenges, and twists on the familiar, but of course always you, our wonderful Steampunk community.

Splendidly yours
Steampunk NZ Inc
Committee and Crew