Semaphore Music Festival

The Semaphore Music Festival is Adelaide's original alt-country, roots and blues festival, spread across the seaside suburb of Semaphore next to Port Adelaide every October long weekend — in 2026, 2–5 October. It's a grassroots, mostly free community event rather than a commercial festival: around 75 bands playing 13 sites, from the foreshore to pubs and the Semaphore Workers Club, where the ticketed shows live. Run as a community arts project more than a business, it's one of the longest-running festivals of its kind in South Australia.

The festival launched in 2005 as a free community event alongside the International Kite Festival on the Semaphore Foreshore Reserve, with organiser Debra Thorsen at the helm from the very first edition. Early years saw a dozen bands playing a handful of venues around the foreshore, originally over the Anzac Day long weekend.

It later shifted to the October Labour Day long weekend and kept growing — from four venues to 13 sites and around 75 acts across the suburb.

In 2016 severe storms forced the festival indoors to Hart's Mill's Flour Shed in Port Adelaide, one of the bigger tests of its two-decade run. The festival marked 20 years in 2024, with The Audreys among the returning acts.