Soft Centre, one of Sydney’s coolest festivals, signals the end of winter

• Soft Centre is in its 8th year now and is about to present its largest festival ever.
• Across four-days, Soft Centre will turn Sydney into a smorgasbord of creativity with artists from all over the world.
• The cutting-end festival wraps up with a massive warehouse party at White Bay Power Station.

Spring is about to begin, but not before Sydney says adios to the coldest month of the year with the annual Soft Centre festival, one of our most unique celebrations of cutting-edge electronica, arts and experimentation. And it’s all going down in and around the historic, red-rust bones of the increasingly present White Bay Power Terminal in Rozelle, as well as a few satellite events scattered around Sydney.

Stretching from Thursday, August 28 to Saturday, August 30, the multi-factor dance festival is gearing up for its biggest edition yet.

It was only confirmed a few days ago that Soft Centre was one of several recipients of a new $500,000 grant program aimed at elevated 10 small-to-medium not-for-profit arts and culture organisations.

Other recipients included a multi-sensory dining experience (“Dinner is the Show” by Marrickville’s Erth Visual & Physical Inc) and the Asian Australian Artists Association Inc, who operate the 4a Centre in Haymarket.

Although the results of that grant and how Soft Centre will spend it are likely to make next year’s event even bigger, this year’s edition is looking sizeable enough.

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Soft Centre has grown into one of Sydney’s best events

The multi-genre arts festival was launched by a bunch of incredibly creative folk out in Casula Powerhouse in 2017, presenting a fierce avant garde dance festival that felt far ahead of the curb, fashioned more as something you’d find in an industrial park in Berlin, as opposed to an art centre in Liverpool.

Just a few years ago, Soft Centre was ranked as one of the 10 best festivals by the ever-discerning dance specialists over at Resident Advisor. It’s racked up a few other awards since, cementing it as one of our biggest non-commercial dance events to balance out all the major music festivals happening in Sydney each year.

The four-day festival has settled into its home at White Bay Power Station with a program of interactive workshops, experimental cinema, commissioned AV performances, and one big closing party featuring artists like Malibu and 2Dual. Lifted by various light and video installations, the party side of the festival transforms the cavernous space into a surreal, sensory playground where sound, movement and visuals collide until the early hours.

Underneath is all is an obvious dedication to conversation and learning, using the backdrop of dance to present a full day of critical discussion alongside deep listening and experimental short films. This will all take place at Ultimo’s St Barnabas Church on August 29, while the same day will have several commissioned audiovisual world premieres from international artists and club theatre collectives.

There’s more. A lot more. In 2025, Soft Centre is the first Australian festival to partner with London’s NTS radio show, collaborating to create their own radio focused entirely on boundary-pushing creatives from NSW. Created to capitalise on Australia’s increasingly diverse electronic scenes, it should be but one of many elements shaping this festival to be every bit as vital and important to Sydney’s arts and culture than SXSW Sydney and even Vivid Sydney.

There will also be a bunch of other satellite events and parties popping up as part of Soft Centre that weekend, so anyone in Sydney looking for something very different to do are advised to follow the festival on social media.

All roads lead to Sydney’s biggest warehouse party

You’d usually have to flirt around St Peters to find a Berlin-style warehouse party in Sydney. Soft Centre is doubling down on that style with the closing party on August 30, rounding a bunch of future-forward artists to transform the heritage bones of White Bay Power Station. This includes Dutch IDM artist upsammy, Vietnamese experimental collective Rắn Cạp Đuôi, UK dubstep pioneer Coki and Japan’s Ryoji Ikeda, as well as Aarti Jadu Ensemble and Malibu.

Final release tickets flirt around the $200 mark, so it’s a luxury item for most, but parties like this in Sydney are still quite rare compared to party-minded hotspots around the world like Brooklyn, Berlin and Amsterdam.

See the full line-up below:

Soft Centre

Where: Various venues (with the closing party at White Bay Power Station)
When: Thursday, August 28 to Sunday, August 31, 2025

softcentre.com.au

Feature image: Jordan Munns.