Newcastle’s coastline and its punk heritage might seem to belong to different worlds. One offers open skies, ocean water and room to slow down. The other carries the restless energy of bands determined to make themselves heard. In the 2026 New Annual program, those identities came together through a shared idea: familiar public places can hold unexpected cultural experiences.
Running from September 25 to October 4, the festival put music at the centre of that conversation. SOAK: Live at the Baths returned to Newcastle Ocean Baths with free sunset concerts, while Newcastle Museum’s NM:PM: Punk! brought local bands and do-it-yourself creativity into a setting usually associated with collecting and preserving the city’s stories. The program offered two distinct ways to hear Newcastle, without asking either to sound like the other.
A Coastal Landmark Takes on a New Role
At Newcastle Ocean Baths, SOAK’s appeal begins with the setting. The 2026 program invited audiences to arrive early, bring a picnic and settle into the community atmosphere as daylight faded. Rather than separating a performance from its surroundings, the series made the waterfront part of the experience. The concerts were free, with four scheduled evening sessions lasting an hour each.
The return followed a strong debut in 2025. According to the City of Newcastle, more than 4,000 visitors attended SOAK’s first two nights that year. Local post-punk band DUST opened the series on a floating stage, followed the next evening by a conservation-themed collaboration involving beatboxer Tom Thum, Filipino and Murrawarri artist DOBBY, and jazz artist Freyja Garbett. Those performances established the baths as a music destination as well as a coastal landmark.
That history gave the 2026 edition something to build on without simply repeating the original formula. Curated by Tim Levinson, known as Urthboy, the returning series moved between electronic music, jazz, hip-hop, soul and blues. Its unifying feature was not a single genre but the opportunity to encounter different sounds in the same open-air setting. The baths provided continuity; the artists supplied the changing character of each evening.
Four Evenings, Different Musical Currents
The opening concert, scheduled for September 26, paired Hermitude with Newcastle-based DJ and Ode Label founder Claire O’Brien. Hermitude’s electronic and hip-hop soundscapes brought one dimension to the bill, while O’Brien’s experience included appearances at Dark Mofo and the Warehouse Project. Putting them together connected nationally recognised performers with a local artist whose work had travelled beyond Newcastle.
The September 27 session, titled “The Tide That Brought You In,” took a different approach. Built around gratitude for people, places and ancestors, it drew on Newcastle’s jazz culture while inviting voices from R&B, blues, industrial rock and soul. The advertised performers included Steph Russell, Grace Aberhart, Sophie Hawthorne and Freyja Garbett, alongside guests such as The Illume Girls and Jayden Kitchener-Waters. Its theme linked the waterfront setting with stories of belonging.
The final two sessions extended that range. Gomeroi artist Kobie Dee and independent collective 92WRLD were scheduled for October 2, bringing storytelling, harmonies and Pasifika sounds into the series. Karen Lee Andrews followed on October 3 with music blending soul, blues, gospel and rock with her Polynesian heritage. Across the four evenings, SOAK’s programming resisted a narrow definition of what a seaside concert should sound like.
The Museum Makes Room for Noise
At Newcastle Museum, NM:PM: Punk! approached local identity through a more unruly musical vocabulary. Scheduled for October 1, the free, all-ages event brought together Boudicca, No Reason, Bitchcraft and The Porkers. The festival listing presented it as a celebration of Newcastle punk culture, making the museum a space for live performance rather than merely a place to look back at the scene.
Each act brought a different connection to that story. Boudicca’s credentials included playing with Amyl & The Sniffers and the Dead Kennedys. No Reason contributed a power-trio format, while Bitchcraft’s advertised one-night-only comeback added a reunion element. The Porkers, described in the program as approaching 40 years of ska-punk activity, linked the evening with a longer history of local music-making.
The experience also extended beyond the stage. DIY Alley, merchandise and a human-sized claw machine featured in the advertised program, giving visitors ways to engage between sets. Those details mattered to the event’s character: this was not presented as a formal retrospective with music added on. It was an invitation to enter a lively, participatory version of the culture the museum was helping celebrate.
A City Heard From More Than One Angle
Taken together, SOAK and NM:PM: Punk! revealed the breadth of New Annual’s music programming. At the baths, the emphasis fell on sunset gatherings and changing musical textures. At the museum, it centred on local bands, punk continuity and hands-on activity. Both events used recognisable Newcastle spaces, but each gave audiences a different relationship with the place they were entering.
Their shared quality was accessibility. Both were free, and the museum event required no booking. That openness connected the coastal concerts with the punk celebration despite their contrasting moods. New Annual’s program did not need to flatten Newcastle into one sound; it made room for several, from waterfront harmonies to museum-stage noise.
