The Performance Arcade

27/08/2026

Last chance to submit your proposals for THE PERFORMANCE ARCADE 2027! Get your ideas in before the end of the month! 🩷🩷🩷 Link in bio.

01/08/2026

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Applications are now open for The Performance Arcade 2027!

It will be a different year, responding to shifts in the Aotearoa NZ arts funding landscape that has affected many in our community.

We are looking to form brave, innovative, and exciting collaborations with artists and organisations to explore how performance can respond to the challenges of our current political, cultural, and economic environment: "tempting fate" as someone recently put it.

Proposals are now welcomed from the performance art, live art, theatre, and dance community. Share something from yourself. Share something for all. Let's all tempt fate together.

⬆️ 🩷 ⬆️ THIS ⬆️ 🩷 ⬆️

Applications are now open for The Performance Arcade 2027 programme and Live Music Series 2027!

12/03/2026

So stoked to publish this fantastic review of PA2026 by Mrittika Ghosh.

"Diaspora is more than a theme; it is a logistical feat accomplished by the team, enacting transoceanic connection in just the fact of gathering. The result is that art-curious Wellingtonians can cross the ocean as easily as crossing the waterfront path to connect with ideas and performances that span hemispheres"

We are so lucky to have worked with such an incredible group of artists this year. Ngā mihi kia koutou!

Reflections on The Performance Arcade 2026 By Mrittika GhoshI arrive at the grassy patch behind Te Papa just in time for the opening ceremony, and already the festival is buzzing. There is perhaps no better venue for this year’s Performance Arcade core concepts—wāhi huihuinga, diaspora, and moa...

04/03/2026

What a fantastic review of The Performance Arcade 2026 by Tiaki Kerei for Theatreview: New Zealand Performing Arts Reviews. Kerei offers an experience of the many experiences within our event, reconjuring the immersion between works, the energy of the weather, and a journey across time in this space.

The Performance Arcade is an acclaimed live art event that attracts 60,000–90,000 people every year to Wellington Waterfront. Every year since 2011 audiences have come for an exciting and diverse programme of works by NZ and International artists, presented within an architectural arrangement of s...

01/03/2026

We are blessed by a toikupu from Hana Buchanan (Ngāti Haumia ki Te Aro, Taranaki iwi, Te Atiawa, Taranaki Whānui ki te Upoko o te Ika), a tangata toikupu - poet, kaikaranga, and kaitito waiata, living and writing from her ancestral lands in Te Whanganui-a-Tara.

Hana's whakapapa connects her to Te Aro Pā, the whenua that hosts the Performance Arcade, and we're deeply honored by this response.

In "he kanikani rangi — dancing in the skies," Hana responds to the first hour of The Performance Arcade 2026 and Te Kahureremoa Taumata's opening performance of vocals and taonga pūoro.

Stunning! Ka nui te mihi Hana, thank you for your kupu and for walking with the Arcade on our collective haerenga.

The Arcade closes tonight. Be sure to join us for our closing programme, with reflections at 5:30pm on the music stage. 🩷

https://www.theperformancearcade.com/post/creative-response-hana-buchanan

28/02/2026

SUNDAY LINE-UP SEE YOU THERE

28/02/2026

RhombusSoundsystem!!!

28/02/2026

28/02/2026

BODIES OF EARTH by

28/02/2026

The Performance Arcade
Live on the Te Whanganui-a-Tara Waterfront, right behind Te Papa

Cold beer brews by our sponsor Double Vision Brewing. Live music all afternoon. Good people, good tunes, ocean air.

11.15am Charlie Woodward
11.30am Marmalady
12.30pm Sim Loco
1.00pm Frida Flacks
1.30pm Ollie Bunnie
2.00pm Ari Leason

Buskers, storytellers, soul, indie folk, acoustic jams and laid back grooves.

Come down, grab a cold brew beer, settle in on the waterfront and let the music carry your afternoon.