The biggest music festival in the Tablelands is back at the Mareeba Rodeo Grounds from 8 to 11 October 2026, and the line-up has quietly become ridiculous: Don McLean, Icehouse, Missy Higgins, Lee Kernaghan, Ian Moss, Troy Cassar-Daley, Busby Marou, Dragon, GangGajang and a good forty others.
The official site will sell you a ticket. What it will not tell you is how to get there from Cairns without the evening going sideways, which is the bit worth writing down.
The drive, and the thing about the range
Mareeba is roughly an hour from Cairns, and you get there by climbing the Kuranda Range on the Kennedy Highway. It is a good road and a genuinely lovely drive in daylight.
At night, after a festival, it is a different proposition: winding, dark, frequently wet, and popular with wildlife. This is the single most important planning decision you will make about the weekend, and the honest answer is do not drive it late at night if you have been drinking or you are tired.
Also check for roadworks before you commit. There have been night closures on the range through 2026, covered in our Kuranda Range night closures post, and a closure turns a one hour trip into something much longer via Gillies.
Your realistic options
- Camp on site. The festival has run camping in previous years and it is the obvious answer if you want to see the headliners without watching the clock. Check what is offered and book it early, because it goes.
- Stay in Mareeba or Atherton. Limited stock, and it fills for this weekend well in advance. If you are reading this in September you are already late, but not hopeless.
- Day trip and leave early. Workable if you are happy to miss the last act.
- Organise a driver. Splitting a private transfer across four or five people is not as mad as it sounds once you price a night’s accommodation in Mareeba that weekend.
Make a weekend of it instead
The smarter play, if you can take the time, is to treat the festival as the centrepiece of a Tablelands trip rather than a night out from Cairns. You are already up there, the driving is done, and the Tablelands are worth more than a day.
Within easy reach of Mareeba: the Atherton Tablelands generally, Lake Tinaroo, the crater lakes, and the waterfall circuit. Coffee country too, since Mareeba sits in the middle of it.
Before you book
Ticket types, camping options and the final line-up should all be confirmed on the festival’s own site. Festival director James Dein, chief executive of Sound Australia, indicated in August that the program was still being finalised with possibly one more announcement to come, so the bill may yet grow.
October is a good month for this: dry season is holding, the nights are comfortable, and the wet has not arrived. Bring something warm anyway, because the Tablelands sit at altitude and the temperature drops after dark in a way it never does in Cairns.
More of what is on across the region in our Cairns festivals and events calendar.
Line-up detail from Cairns Local News, 9 August 2026 and The Express Newspaper, 1 September 2026. Confirm dates, tickets, camping and the final line-up on the official festival site before booking travel.
