The First Thing You Notice Is the Cold
You step off the plane in Hobart and the air hits different. Not unpleasant — just very clear, very still, and about fifteen degrees colder than whatever you left behind on the mainland. It’s mid-June. The sun sets before five. And somewhere in the dark, MONA’s annual exercise in beautiful chaos is about to begin.
Dark Mofo runs June 11 to 22, 2026 — twelve days built around the winter solstice, organised by the same people behind the Museum of Old and New Art. If you haven’t been to MONA, the short version is: a millionaire built an underground museum in Hobart filled with art that makes some people uncomfortable and other people cry. Dark Mofo is what happens when that energy spills out across an entire city.
Fire and Food at the Waterfront
The Winter Feast is the anchor. Princes Wharf gets taken over by long communal tables, red string lights, fire pits, and a rotating lineup of Tasmanian food producers. We’re talking wood-fired lamb from farms you’ve never heard of, freshly shucked oysters from the Freycinet coast, wallaby sliders that sound weird but actually work.
The setup is outdoors, obviously. That’s part of the point — you’re eating in the cold, standing around fires with strangers, and the live music bouncing off the waterfront warehouses gives the whole thing this accidental-feeling atmosphere that you can’t really manufacture. It gets loud. It gets messy. The queues for the good stalls can hit 20 minutes.
One thing worth knowing: Winter Feast tickets sell separately from other festival events, and they go fast. If you only buy tickets to one thing, make it this.
Stripping Down at Dawn
The Nude Solstice Swim is probably the thing Dark Mofo is most famous for, and honestly it’s a bit hard to explain to people who haven’t been. On the morning of the winter solstice — the shortest day of the year — a few hundred people (sometimes more, depending on the year) take their clothes off and run into the River Derwent at first light.
The water temperature is around 10°C. The air is colder. Nobody makes you do it. There’s no registration or sign-up — you just show up at Long Beach in Sandy Bay before dawn and wait. When the moment comes, everyone goes in together.
Is it a spiritual experience? Some people say so. Is it mainly just very, very cold? Also yes. The organisers frame it as a ritual celebration of the darkness, which sounds grand, but the actual experience is more like: you’re shivering on a beach at 6am, someone counts to three, and then you’re screaming in freezing water with a bunch of strangers. Afterwards everyone wraps in towels and drinks hot chocolate. It’s oddly bonding.
What Happens in the Dark
The art program changes every year, so I can’t tell you exactly what you’ll see in 2026. Past editions have featured enormous neon installations, sound works that fill entire buildings, performances in disused warehouses, and a lot of fire. Like, a lot of fire. Dark Mofo has a thing for fire.
The programming tends to lean provocative — MONA’s founder David Walsh has never been interested in art that plays it safe. Some of it will be brilliant. Some might make you uncomfortable. That’s the pitch. If you want predictable, this isn’t your festival.
Most installations are scattered across the waterfront and city centre, which means you’ll be walking between venues in the cold and dark. A lot of the experience is actually just being in Hobart at night in winter, which has its own atmosphere — the city is small enough that you run into the same people at different events, and the whole place takes on this slightly unreal quality after dark.
Before You Pack
Some things they don’t put on the festival website:
It’s properly cold. Not Melbourne-cold-but-fine cold. Hobart in June sits between 3 and 11°C, and you’ll be outdoors after dark for hours. Bring thermals, a proper waterproof jacket, and shoes you don’t mind getting wet. Gloves aren’t optional.
Accommodation is a problem. Hobart has maybe 5,000 hotel rooms on a good day, and Dark Mofo attracts crowds well beyond that. Book as early as you can — two or three months ahead is not overkill. Salamanca and the waterfront are the best areas if you want to walk to venues, but anything within a 10-minute drive works. Check Trip.com or Hotels.com — Hobart prices spike during the festival so it’s worth comparing.
Getting there is straightforward but not cheap. Direct flights from Melbourne and Sydney take about 90 minutes. Jetstar and Virgin usually operate the route, but fares jump as the festival approaches. I’d suggest locking in flights early — Kiwi.com is decent for comparing domestic options including budget carriers.
Tickets work event-by-event. There’s no single festival pass. Some things (outdoor installations, the solstice swim) are free. Winter Feast and headline performances need tickets, and the popular ones sell out in hours. Set a reminder for when sales open.
Tasmania Beyond the Festival
You’d be making a mistake if you flew to Hobart and didn’t explore a bit. Tasmania in winter is genuinely stunning — misty, green, empty in a way that the mainland isn’t.
Cradle Mountain is the obvious day trip (about 2.5 hours from Hobart, or you can stay overnight near the park). Port Arthur Historic Site is closer and worth a full afternoon — the convict history is heavy but the site itself is beautiful. The Huon Valley south of Hobart has some excellent cider producers if that’s your thing.
For organised day trips, KLOOK and KKday both list Tasmania experiences — useful if you don’t want to rent a car, though honestly a rental gives you a lot more flexibility in Tassie. Europcar operates from the airport.
The Part Nobody Mentions
Dark Mofo can be overwhelming. The programming is dense, the cold is relentless, and if you try to see everything you’ll burn out by day three. My honest suggestion: pick three or four things you really want to see, go to the Winter Feast at least once, and leave the rest open. Some of the best festival moments happen when you’re just wandering between venues and stumble into something unexpected.
Also — and this is minor — phone reception around the waterfront during peak events is basically nonexistent. Too many people, not enough towers. Download your tickets offline and agree on a meeting spot with your group before you head out.
On the last night I went, I ended up sitting on a bench near the waterfront eating a lukewarm meat pie, watching people stream out of some installation I’d already forgotten the name of. It was about 4°C. My phone was dead. I sat there for maybe ten minutes doing nothing in particular, and it was probably the best part of the whole trip.