Perth Festival

Perth Festival is Australia's longest-running cultural festival, held every summer across February into early March. Founded by the University of Western Australia in 1953, it programmes theatre, dance, film, visual arts, literature and a substantial music strand — classical and contemporary — across venues from the UWA campus to the city's theatres and outdoor sites. Known as the Perth International Arts Festival (PIAF) from 2000 to 2017, it reverted to the simpler name and remains WA's anchor arts event, the one that brings international acts west who'd otherwise skip the crossing. The 2027 edition is slated for 5–28 February, with the full programme still to come.

The first Festival of Perth opened on 3 January 1953 with a season of staged plays, including a production at UWA's Sunken Garden. Created by the University of Western Australia and inspired by the Edinburgh Festival, it predates both the Adelaide Festival and every other multi-arts festival in the country.

It ran under the Festival of Perth name until 2000, spent 17 years as the Perth International Arts Festival, then rebranded to Perth Festival from 2017. It marked 70 years in 2023.

Its claim to being the oldest is well-founded: it's routinely cited as the oldest annual international multi-arts festival in the southern hemisphere, seven years ahead of Adelaide's 1960 start.