Every year the world waits with great anticipation and bated breath for the details of the Dark Mofo Festival menu, and we can bring them to you today.
It’s a tough year for any musical event – witness the late cancellation of Bluesfest this year with the added uncertainties of world events, petrol prices inflation and a general stench and plague on democracy emanating from a certain area of the world.
At least we have Dark Mofo to provide another deliciously impertinent beacon of naughty fun between 11 and 22 June 2026, mostly centered around Hobart, the capital at the edge of the world.
There is of course a panoply of intriguing arts and perfomance events around the Apple Isle, the details of which can be found here (with the website’s usual inimitable style of entering) but for us, it’s all about the music. The list is as eclectic and innovative as usual, with something of the darker arts to tempt everyone. Headline acts include Dry Cleaning, The Black Angels, Protomartyr and Snapped Ankles.
The full list of acts is outlined below, and tickets go on sale on at 10am on Wednesday, 1 April 2026 from here.
Dark Mofo Musical acts will be:
The supreme witch of New York’s hip-hop underground, Princess Nokia* (USA) dials up merciless lyricism and surreal self-portraits.
UNADULTER8 is dance music with dream logic. A new AV experience from Glaswegian innovator Sega Bodega* (GBR).
Power Trip* (USA) is adrenaline-fuelled thrash metal from Texas. Enraged vocals and relentless riffs.
After a decade-long silence, elusive Manchester outfit the World United Lucifer Youth Foundation, aka WU LYF* (GBR), resurfaces with vocal-shredding melodrama.
Danny Brown (USA), Detroit’s master of reinvention, pushes hip hop into wild and exhilarating territory. Abrasive, experimental rap.
Sassy 009* (NOR) is the sultry, shapeshifting electropop project from Oslo-based producer, songwriter and vocalist Sunniva Lindgård.
Recoil as Oklahoma City’s sludgy noise rock quartet Chat Pile (USA) transforms Altar Bar into a grindhouse slaughterfest of sound.
New York composer Kelly Moran* (USA) coaxes vast emotional weather from the piano with compositions that bloom towards quiet rapture.
Acid Mothers Temple* (JPN) abducts minds with their sprawling, improvised psychedelic music from Japan, guided by ‘cosmic translator’ Makoto Kawabata.
Dizzying electropop duo Purity Ring (CAN) build worlds of their own with euphoric soundscapes and spectral, stream-of-consciousness vocals.
Headache* (GBR) is music to make you forget yourself. AI-spoken musings drift over downtempo electronics in this mysterious collaboration between London-based producer Vegyn and poet Francis Hornsby Clark.
Soul-bound to her computer, electronic artist Ninajirachi (AUS) helms a new generation of maximalist EDM.
A legion of machine-steppers will hammer to a thunderous set to mark ten years of Gabber Eleganza’s (ITA) Hakke Show, a devotee of hardcore.
Borderlands** is a night of extreme atmospheres of light and sound curated by Lawrence English / Room40. Xiu Xiu (USA) will perform the fractured, industrial soundscape of David Lynch’s midnight masterpiece Eraserhead, Loscil (CAN) offers destruction and renewal through consuming sounds and visions of British Columbia’s wildfires, and Amby Downs (AUS) uses sparse instrumentation, field recordings and harmonic drones to trace the spread of feral deer across the Australian continent.
From ’90s alt rock to industrial techno, revered producer and composer Daniel Avery visits every corner of his sound in his most ambitious show to date.
Mysterious East London collective Snapped Ankles* (GBR) summons the untamed energy of the forest with wooden log synths and propulsive rhythms.
Unrestrained and brutal, clipping. (USA) are an experimental hip-hop trio from the United States’ West Coast.
Off-kilter South London post-punkers Dry Cleaning (GBR) deliver deadpan spoken word narration, surreal observations, odd images that linger.
Texan psych rock pioneers The Black Angels (USA) mark the 20th Anniversary of their debut album, Passover, a record that helped define the 21st century psych revival.
Grief, grace and grandeur from Blackwater Holylight (USA). These Portland-born sirens carve out a sound both delicate and heavy, with doom-drenched riffs and shimmering vocals.
Hymns to the Dead* is the festival’s annual night of deafening metal curated by Tassie death metal vocalist Chalky. It features symphonic gothic metal from Tiamat (SWE), blackened wails from Negative Plane (USA) and female rage channelled into brutal death metal by Emasculator (CZE/USA).
Lord Spikeheart* (KEN) is a figurehead of Kenya’s metal scene, pushing the limits of extreme music.
Hard-edged and rhythm-driven, Protomartyr (USA) present austere post-punk from Detroit’s industrial sprawl.
From Tokyo’s queer club underground, Japanese-German experimentalist Nina Utashiro (JPN, USA, DEU) coils raw vocals around writhing, cinematic sound worlds.
Unflinching self-portraits and ferocious charisma from Miss Kaninna (AUS), a First Nations rising star.
Descend into grime-streaked electronic wastelands, borne of the Bristol producer Iglooghost’s (GBR) hyperactive imagination.
At Launceston’s Albert Hall, Folk Bitch Trio (AUS) spins fantasies, daydreams, and humiliations into harmonies both rich and visceral, and rapper Baker Boy (AUS) accesses ancestral power, resilience and reclamation in words woven through Yolŋu Matha, English, and Burarra language.
