_{Cover Image: The Stamps will headline Future Treasures. Image supplied.}

From 20 to 30 August, Walyalup / Fremantle will host the 2026 iteration of 10 Nights in Port. Evolving from the long-standing Fremantle Festival, the 10-day event spans historical spaces, heritage sites, and public precincts across the port city, including the Walyalup Fremantle Arts Centre, Victoria Hall, and the WA Shipwrecks Museum.

Curated around the concept of “huddle,” this year’s program, led by City of Fremantle Creative Programs Lead ‘Ofa Fotu, prioritises physical gathering, shared ritual, and local creative practice over digital mediation.

Visual Art and First Nations Perspectives

The festival opens on Thursday 20 August at Walyalup Fremantle Arts Centre with two major exhibitions. Nullians, a solo exhibition by Noongar artist Kamsani Bin Salleh (Kambarni), uses political satire and comic-style illustrations to interrogate the historical and lingering impacts of terra nullius and colonial extraction.

Running concurrently is In our hands, we hold, co-curated by Zali Morgan and Abigail Moncrieff. The exhibition positions weaving as both a physical craft and an intangible cultural framework. Foregrounding First Nations women artists alongside creators exploring ancestral memory, the show features work by Sharyn Egan, Mabel Juli, Lorraine Connelly-Northey, Brett Nannup, James Nguyen, Clare Peake, Chantal Fraser, Beverly Thomson, and Katie West.

Performance, Sound, and Maritime Histories

Maritime history and site-responsive sound converge in Tides (25–26 August), presented at the WA Shipwrecks Museum. Multi-instrumentalist Lucky Oceans, joined by Ben Vanderwal and Zac Grafton, performs a live score alongside projections by filmmaker Brendan Hutchens cast directly onto the stern of the Batavia.

Experimental sound and projection also feature in Myriad Sun’s In The Block Universe (21–22 August at Victoria Hall), a 360-degree holographic performance housed within a transparent, four-sided projection cube – a work originally commissioned by Tone List for the 2024 Audible Edge festival.

Theatre and vocal performance continue with Asha Cleur’s A Magical Guide to Fighting Fascism (22 August), a trilingual narrative tracing three generations of women across Chile, Perth, and Scotland. Meanwhile, local youth music is represented in Future Treasures (23 August), headlined by Fremantle indie-pop trio The Stamps.

Contemporary Dance and Physical Theatre

Movement programs focus on female archetypes and survival narratives. Choreographer Kimberley Parkin presents The Genesis Project (27 August at Victoria Hall), a contemporary dance work performed by an ensemble of six femme dancers. The production features sound design by David Stewart and a original score by Great Statue (Annika Moses), examining monstrous female tropes within patriarchal storytelling.

Circus WA’s Youth Academy presents The Raft (29–30 August at Victoria Hall), a dark physical comedy following a cast of cruise ship castaways navigating class dynamics and limited resources atop a single vessel.

Shared Ritual and Community Archive

Community participation and outdoor gatherings form the structural spine of the festival’s final weekend. Map of Memories, led by storyteller Andrea Gibbs, acts as a roving recording studio across various Fremantle sites – including Port Beach and Princess May Park – collecting oral histories to construct a digital community archive.

On Saturday 29 August, the festival culminates in Feast & Fire at Walyalup Fremantle Arts Centre. The evening features global street food alongside the live ignition of artist Stewart Scambler’s custom-built train kiln (dragon kiln) and the burning of sculptural effigies under the night sky.

10 Nights in Port runs from 20-30 August 2026 across various venues in Fremantle. For more details, see 10nightsinport.com.au