Monet, Musicals and Mega Illuminations: 10 Essential Events Happening in Adelaide in July

If you’ve been out and about after dark, it’d be impossible to miss Illuminate. The festival is lighting up the city in every sense. Monet to Matisse, AGSA’s winter show stopper, has also opened its doors with a huge number of modernist masterpieces from the gallery’s permanent collection and from Ohio’s Toledo Museum of Art. It’s the perfect opportunity to get a glimpse of Monet’s Waterlilies without hopping on a flight.

Here are 10 things to do in Adelaide this month – and all the food news you need to know.

Jump to:

• Festivals

• Theatre

• Art

• Food and drink news

Festivals and events in July 2026

• Illuminate Adelaide, until July 19: Illuminate Adelaide is back for another year of illuminations, music and performance. Highlights include the magnificent Night Visions, which transforms the Botanic Gardens into a magical gallery. Trees are transformed into a Mount Rushmore-esque monument with faces projected onto the canopy of trees. Beams cut through trees and a network of lasers animate a greenhouse. Throughout the city, a free selection of illuminations bring whimsy, light and life to the streets with City Lights.

• Coonawarra Wine Dinner, July 23: The National Wine Centre is holding a dinner with four of the founding families of the Coonawarra wine region. The event will centre around the Coonawarra Cabernet with dishes designed to echo the wines bold and structured flavours. $175 per person.

• The Willunga Almond Blossom Festival, July 25 and 26: Head to an old-school fun fair with rides, circus acts, a petting zoo and live music. There are also competitions for the best almond baked good and almond nut cracking.

Theatre in July 2026

There’s a great collection of theatre and musicals coming to Adelaide in 2026. These are the shows you can check out this month.

• Uncle Vanya – but There’s ASMR Soap Cutting Videos Playing in the Bottom Right Corner

Award-winning storyteller, and Adelaide Fringe regular, Yoz Mensch (My Grandpa Doesn’t Follow Me on Instagram: A Guide to Trans-generational Road-Tripping) joins the cast of this potentially chaotic take on Chekhov’s play about despair and unfulfilled lives. It’ll be genre-bending and gender-bending with thoroughly modern additions, such as Tiktok references and puppet shows. There’s opt-in audience participation too, and ASMR whispering. You have been warned.

Uncle Vanya runs from July 9 to 18 at Adelaide College of the Arts. Tickets are on sale now.

• Heathers the Musical

Heathers walked so that Clueless and Mean Girls could run. If you haven’t seen the 1988 film starring Winona Ryder and Christian Slater, the dark comedy satirises teen movies of the time. The off-Broadway version, which debuted in 2014, has been touring for over a decade with minor tweaks to the songs and characters. It has a pop-rock score by Laurence O’Keefe, behind the music of Legally Blonde: The Musical, and by screenwriter Kevin Murphy. Veronica Sawyer is played by newcomer Emma Caporaso. New Zealand-born Calista Nelmes, who was a finalist on The Voice, is queen bee Heather Chandler.

Heathers the Musical runs from July 16 to 26 at Her Majesty’s Theatre. Tickets are on sale now.

• Logan St

Conceived by award-winning theatre-maker Jacob Boehme, Logan St is set to be State Theatre Company South Australia’s first mainstage production by a Kaurna playwright. It’s inspired by the history behind Adelaide Mosque, built by migrant cameleers in the 1800s, and it follows an unlikely union forged between an Afghan caretaker, Goolie, and an Aboriginal woman called Dulcie. As their friendship grows, the story of another young Kaurna girl, who lived in 1836, surfaces. Boehme’s tale of resilience and quiet revolution features Aunty Lynette Crocker, Uncle Lewis O’Brien, Alexis West and Elyas Alavi.

Logan St runs from July 24 to August 8 at Space Theatre. Tickets are on sale now.

Art in July 2026

The Adelaide art scene this year is chock-full of great exhibitions. Here’s what you can see this month.

• Two Islands, One Thread: Textiles of Lombok & Bali

Woven, embroidered and tie-dyed textiles – including previously unseen items from AGSA’s collection and loans from Lombok’s West Nusa Tenggara State Museum – will be on display in an exhibition that explores the artistic exchanges between two Indonesian communities. Artworks by the Sasak people of Lombok and people of Bali show how each respected their ancestors and their spiritualities. Two Islands, One Thread: Textiles of Lombok & Bali runs until October 11 at the Art Gallery of South Australia.

• Beginnings

Imagine if, when you shopped for groceries, you could see the whole cost of buying, say, a punnet of blueberries. Not just the dollar amount, but the labour of growing and picking them, the environmental costs of transporting them, preserving them and keeping them cool until they reach your basket. Adelaide University’s Mod gallery has created a convenience store where you can do just that.

Beginnings runs until November 20 at Mod.

• Monet to Matisse: Defying Tradition

See world-famous impressionist, cubist, surrealist and abstract expressionist works by master artists, including Cézanne, Monet, Matisse, Picasso and Renoir, in AGSA’s major winter exhibition. The Adelaide exclusive features 57 masterpieces from the 19th and 20th centuries, all on loan from Ohio’s Toledo Museum of Art. There are select works from AGSA’s collection too, showing how artists transformed modern art during this radical era.

Monet to Matisse: Defying Tradition runs from July 11 to November 8 at the Art Gallery of South Australia.

• James Tylor: Turrangka...in the shadows

Mildura-born artist James Tylor uses his art to explore his Kaurna, Māori and European heritage. Over the years, his practice has spanned photography, video and sculpture, often drawing on the language of the Kaurna people. Turrangka...in the shadows will be the most comprehensive display of his art yet, including his hand-tinted daguerreotypes (images created on mirrored or copper plates), as well as re-created Kaurna artefacts and digital photography.

James Tylor: Turrangka...in the shadows runs from July 31 to November 1 at the Art Gallery of South Australia.

Food news and new openings:

What we’ve covered recently:

• One of Australia’s best Mexican chefs, Alejandro Huerta, will open his first restaurant in Adelaide.

• 10 new venues moving into the Adelaide Central Market later this year.

You might have missed:

• We’re halfway through the year. Here are the best new restaurants, cafes and bars in Adelaide which have opened this year so far – and all the regional openings we loved.

Additional reporting by Emma Joyce.

This article was originally published in February 2026. It is updated every month.