After 20 years, Adelaide is losing its leading Asian arts event, OzAsia

OzAsia Festival has arrived with its usual, exciting iconography — lanterns illuminating the Elder Park lawns, bustling market stalls, and the buzz of audiences experiencing Asian art on a grand stage.

This year's festivities, however, have returned with an unexpected and grim addition. The Adelaide Festival Centre announced this year that 2026 would mark the final run of its full-bodied artistic programming.

While some prepared to celebrate the milestone, others inched towards the festival dates in a state of shock, rage and anticipatory grief.

"I never, ever guessed that it would be cancelled. I thought it was an institution," former OzAsia Festival community engagement coordinator Jessica Zeng tells the ABC.

Two decades of Asian art

For two decades, the festival promoted Asian and Asian Australian arts, music and food, rallying a dedicated following of more than 200,000 attendees in recent years that was anticipated to grow.

What was widely recognised by the community as a hotbed for meaningful artist collaboration, cultural edutainment, and a familiar gathering place has now been replaced for some with a sense of cynicism about the future of the arts and festival landscape.

In a statement in August, Adelaide Festival Centre CEO Kate Gould said OzAsia Festival was expected to shift to a "year-round programming" format from 2027 with an annual presence of The Lucky Dumpling Market.

Zeng said the decision to cancel the festival was "unceremonious" and "short sighted".

"There's so much more to the festival than the market, she said.

"It's really about capturing a broader Asian diasporic experience that's not the traditional kind of cultural signifier. I think that's something so special that can only happen with a festival."

Spaces of belonging

"A homecoming", is how Zeng described OzAsia Festival's overall effect on the community; for artists, vendors and audiences alike.

"There were so many beautiful moments. Memories that are bittersweet with the knowledge of OzAsia's end," she says.

Zeng said a Chinese migrant once told her OzAsia was the first time she felt like she "truly belonged in this country".

"I have had multiple people say that OzAsia was the reason they thought that Adelaide could be their home. You know, new migrants," she says.

"What about using that as a measure of success? Why don't we poll how many people realise that Adelaide was a safe city for them because they experienced OzAsia Festival?"

Boram Lee, a senior lecturer at Adelaide University for festival and event management, can speak to this personally.

"I came to visit in 2017 where I first experienced OzAsia Festival. That was a big part of me deciding to move. I didn't feel like a stranger," Lee says.

"Festivals have always been my playground, but up until that point, I had never come across a festival that celebrated a shared cultural identity."

Lee said the traditional festival structure allowed for shared moments during a period of "friction, conflict and hatred taking place in Australia".

She said it also provided a platform for "strategic cultural diplomacy".

Where artists careers were born

Asian Australian artist and creative producer Danielle Lim credits OzAsia Festival as the launch pad for her career.

"If you were to ask an Asian artist where they started, I think it's very likely to hear OzAsia," Lim says.

First introduced to the festival through the Contemporary Asian Australian Performance (CAAP) Artist Lab as an emerging artist in 2021, Lim became a producer on the same program the following year.

"I met a lot of collaborators of mine through that program and through OzAsia, collaborators who I still work with very closely in my practice today," she says.

In 2024, Lim also participated in a theatre work-in-progress, All Things At Once, which was an international collaboration between Infinity Ensemble in Melbourne, OzAsia and a Hong Kong arts festival — bringing together a half Asian-Australian and a half Hong Kong cast.

"These kinds of collaborations aren't accessible to us anymore. We're losing those international connections," she says.

Could a new festival exist?

Former Contemporary Asian Australian Performance Artist Lab facilitator Valerie Berry, a local artist and festival attendee, said the festival would leave a lasting legacy.

"The biggest thing is seeing Asian Australian stories — whether that's theatre, or on stage at The Lucky Dumpling Market — that sense of gathering and enjoying something that's either outside your experience or connecting to your culture," she says.

Berry is grieving the loss of the festival but she is also looking forward to slowly rebuilding an initiative with the broader community, like OzAsia Festival, that centres collaboration, "global majority" narratives, and connection.

"There's still a need for Asian Australian stories. There are still younger generations who want to connect with their identity, so there will need to be a platform for those emerging voices and emerging audiences as well."

Kate Gould, CEO of the Adelaide Festival Centre and Joon-Yee Kwok, artistic director of OzAsia, declined an interview with the ABC for this article.

OzAsia Festival is on until November 1.