This Bluesfest is a dudefest. Of 35 acts, just five are women

2 hours ago 2

By Katie McMurray

November 20, 2025 — 1.51pm

Women. Heard of them? Clearly NSW’s premier old timers’ music festival, Bluesfest Byron Bay, has not. Of 35 acts announced this week for Bluesfest 2026, just five of the featured artists are women.

I scrolled down the line-up page, excited to find any female acts. I kept scrolling. No women. Split Enz. Really!? Earth, Wind and Fire. Yay! Sublime. Cool! Until, at the bottom of my phone feed, came five female acts: Z-Star, Aine Tyrrell, Nik West, Roshani and Angelique Francis.

On the 2026 Bluesfest line-up … the band 19-Twenty.

Was there a problem with finding more female musicians, or is the problem with Bluesfest? When I ask around my music-loving friends, it seems Bluesfest has a woman problem.

Recall what happened in 2018, when a similar paucity of women – just four performers – was billed for the following year’s line-up. “Looks like a sausage fest, where’s the chicks?” posted circus performer and author Simone Genziuk. This angered the festival’s owner and director, Peter Noble, who denied there was a lack of women and responded that her pithy remark was the “sort of thing that worked well in Nazi Germany”. Bluesfest soon apologised to Genziuk, whose father was a Holocaust child.

Three years ago, Noble booked disgraced Sydney band Sticky Fingers for the 2023 Bluesfest. Noble thought the boys had done enough time in the penalty box after lead singer Dylan Frost apologised for intimidating Indigenous performer Thelma Plum after a 2016 gig. It turned out this incident wasn’t isolated, and the band went into hiatus as gigs and radio play dried up.

When Noble offered the boys a stage at Bluesfest 2023, other acts began withdrawing. Sampa the Great and King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard led the stand against Sticky Fingers. And it worked. Noble begrudgingly cancelled the appearance of the troubled Newtown-based group.

Noble announced last year that 2025 would be his last Bluesfest, spurring not only a rush of ticket sales but a $500,000 boost from the state government’s recently formed NSW Contemporary Music Festival Viability Fund for the 2026 event. I have to wonder how they’re defining “contemporary”.

Noble is a huge part of Australian music history and his personal legacy is phenomenal, but where are the female performers?

Part of the problem is the festival line-up is loaded with bands formed last century, as far back as the blokier 1960s and ’70s. With many original band members deceased or incapacitated, the acts are topped up with alternative musicians – rarely women. The new-look old bands remain man-heavy.

And the future of Australian music is decidedly male. Women remain under-represented in almost all areas of the industry: streaming playlists; producer and songwriter credits. Vicky Gordon, founder and director of the Australian Women in Music Awards Conference, recently asked more than 250 of her constituents to stand up if they believed they would achieve gender equality in their lifetime. Only five women stood.

Who will stand up to Bluesfest?

Of its 35 acts billed for next year, many are bands, which are populated predominantly by men. So let’s take a stab. There might be 120 or more performers on stage. Other than the five women billed, don’t expect to see many others.

My 14-year-old niece has decided to become a musician and music teacher. She plays The Last Post on Anzac Day, but will she and her trumpet make it on stage at a future Bluesfest Byron Bay?

Noble may yet announce Missy Higgins and Kasey Chambers and some legendary female artists will appear as special guests in 2026. Maybe he has Mavis Staples or Bonnie Raitt up his sleeve, or Stevie Nicks. They won’t have many sisters to hang with in the green room.

As the 2026 line-up of female performers stands, five is a 25 per cent improvement on 2019’s forward billing of four women. Do we call that progress?

So far, from Split Enz to The Living End – from start to end – Bluesfest is a dudefest.

Katie McMurray was publicist for the Sydney Writers’ Festival for eight years. She teaches women to find their voices and write. She has previously written about the lack of female voices on ABC Radio Sydney.