Australia's long-running Laneway Festival is set to significantly alter its touring route for 2027, eliminating Adelaide and Perth from its schedule. The festival will also move its Queensland performance from the Gold Coast to Brisbane.
These changes will reduce the festival's 2027 footprint to four cities: Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, and Auckland. Festival organizers cited logistical challenges and the need to ease travel for the lineup and crew across a condensed timeframe as the reasons for the adjustments. "For over two decades, we've had the pleasure of bringing Laneway to Australia and New Zealand, with stints in Singapore and Detroit too," organizers stated on social media. "Running so many shows, so close together, across so much ground is a logistical feat we're proud of, but it also asks a lot of our line-up and crew."
Organizers emphasized that these departures from Adelaide and Perth are temporary. Laneway Festival, which began in Melbourne in 2003, has a history of hosting internationally renowned artists. Past performers include Chappell Roan, Charli XCX, Gotye, and Billie Eilish. The festival's most recent event in February featured Chappell Roan as a headliner, who notably declined to participate in the Australian tradition of a "shoey" during her Gold Coast performance.
During her set, Roan was met with crowd chants for a "shoey," a practice involving drinking beer from a shoe. The singer responded by stating, "No. No, no, no, no, I want to talk about being gay." Roan publicly came out as lesbian in 2024. Several artists performing in Australia have previously acceded to fan requests for "shoeys."