[Back to the blog](/experience/blog/) # BLEACH Festival, reconsidered: a choir to open it, a quiet close eleven days later > BLEACH Festival returns under a new Artistic Director and a new spring date, 1 to 11 October 2026 at HOTA, opening with a community choir and closing eleven days later with a work at Theatre 1. Two acres of garden sit between either night and Contessa. --- **BLEACH Festival** has moved to spring for the first time in its history, running **1 to 11 October 2026** at HOTA under a new Artistic Director, **Felix Preval**, who previously led Darwin Festival and produced Melbourne Fringe. The festival itself dates back to 2012, a modest pilot founded by Louise Bezzina that ran alongside the Quiksilver Pro and drew around 30,000 people; within a few years it had grown into one of the country's most distinctive site-specific arts festivals, earning a Sidney Myer Performing Arts Award along the way, and it remains the largest arts festival on the Gold Coast by geography. Eleven days this time, longer than any edition before it, and a genuinely different festival to walk into. ## The choir opens it, on the lawn at dusk **BEACON**, a large-scale installation in HOTA's Lakeside Precinct by UK artist Morag Myerscough and Gold Coast group Everybody NOW! (a Home Company at HOTA in its own right), opens the festival on **Thursday 1 October** with a community choir singing a musical setting of author Holly Ringland's poetry, arranged under choral director Alex Van den Broek. From there the installation stays lit through all eleven nights, hand-painted gateways by day, neon after dark, without needing a return visit on any particular evening. ![Outdoor pool set in landscaped gardens with white shade structures and high-rise towers](/assets/photos/facilities/outdoor-pool-and-grounds.jpg) ## A closing weekend at Theatre 1 The festival's final weekend belongs to Theatre 1, where **No One Gets Out of Here Alive** – a work by The Farm, a company known for bold physicality and emotional directness – plays **Saturday 10 October at 6 pm** and **Sunday 11 October at 4 pm**. It sits with mortality without solemnity, weaving in the small endings alongside the large one, a death of dreams or past selves as much as anything final, and uses humour and audience participation to get there. It runs an hour and carries content notes for haze and nudity, and like BEACON, it is backed by the EGC Arts Fund. A considered bookend to a festival that opened with a choir. ## The program either side **THAW**, Legs On The Wall's physical theatre piece built on three tonnes of melting ice, opens the festival at dawn on Thursday 1 October on Surfers Paradise Beach, with a second, later staging at HOTA Lake Precinct that Saturday. The Outdoor Stage carries its own two nights the same weekend: **Lady Blackbird & Electric Fields** open it free on the Friday, and **SIX60** headline the Saturday with support from Sub-Tribe, New Zealand's best-known live export making its first Gold Coast return in seven years. ## Crossing the river to get there The nearest G:link stop to Contessa is about a fifteen-minute walk, then a ride north to the crossing HOTA directs every visitor to: over Chevron Island and the Green Bridge, close to twenty minutes on foot from the Surfers Paradise stop. Guests who'd rather manage one crossing instead of two can drive the whole way; the property's own undercover parking is free and needs no booking, simpler than competing for one of HOTA's fee-free bays once the grounds fill up for a festival night. ![Large heated indoor pool with spa, seating and gardens visible through windows](/assets/photos/facilities/indoor-pool.jpg) ## Reserve the stay Two acres of garden and a private marina sit between the festival crowd and either apartment – the indoor heated pool and sauna for a cooler evening, the outdoor pool, tennis court and gardens for the mornings in between. Check-in runs 2 to 5 pm, check-out 8 to 10 am, and full payment is taken 48 hours before arrival rather than at the time of booking. Of the 124 residences in the building, only ten are released for holiday stays, each presented on the site by its own apartment number and photographs rather than a category and a stock image, one more reason a boutique stretch of Main Beach suits either end of an eleven-day festival better than a room built for one night. [**Check the six apartments and reserve yours**](/accommodation/), or read more about [the residence and its facilities](/stay/). Session times for Theatre 1, and anything else added to the program, sit on the [official BLEACH Festival site](https://bleachfestival.com.au/). ## More from the journal. ### [Pacific Airshow Gold Coast 2026 from a boutique Main Beach address](/experience/blog/pacific-airshow-2026/) Travel tips ### [The Gold Coast Show 2026: a day out, an evening on the river](/experience/blog/gold-coast-show/) Travel tips ### [Ten years of Crafted Festival, and a quiet address to come back to](/experience/blog/ten-years-of-crafted-festival/) Travel tips ### [Groundwater 2026: a free Broadbeach festival, a quiet Main Beach base](/experience/blog/groundwater-2026/) Travel tips ### [Gold Coast 500 2026: a balcony that looks down on the track](/experience/blog/gold-coast-500/) Travel tips ### [The Gold Coast Marathon from Main Beach, with room for the whole crew](/experience/blog/gold-coast-marathon/) Travel tips