Floriade NightFest

NightFest is the ticketed after-dark arm of Floriade, Canberra's spring flower festival in Commonwealth Park. For a run of nights during the festival season, the park reopens from 6:30pm to 10:30pm with the garden beds lit up, large-scale illumination installations, food stalls, street theatre, fire shows, an adults-only cabaret and live music across multiple stages. The music bill leans local and national — recent programs have mixed Canberra regulars like Rob Aspinall with touring acts — making it one of the few nights the capital's parkland doubles as a live music venue.

The scale is genuine for a Canberra event: organisers reported nearly 30,000 people through NightFest in a recent season, against more than 187,000 interstate and international visitors to Floriade overall.