# Groundwater 2026: a free Broadbeach festival, a quiet Main Beach base > Groundwater Country Music Festival returns to Broadbeach on 16 to 18 October 2026. Free, sprawling across more than a dozen stages. Two acres of garden between you and the rest of the Gold Coast remains the right answer. - Tag: Travel tips - Published: 2026-05-04 --- The **Groundwater Country Music Festival** returns to Broadbeach on **16, 17 and 18 October 2026** for its thirteenth edition – more than a dozen stages set up in parks, on the mall, along the boulevard and inside the suburb's pubs and bars. The 2025 weekend drew more than 60,000 people through Broadbeach by the organisers' count, with an estimated $15 million lift to the local economy. The whole thing is free. A festival on that scale is a fine thing to walk into and a better thing to walk home from. Contessa sits a block back from the sand on the river side of Main Beach, in two acres of landscaped gardens – far enough that the festival noise never reaches the building, close enough that the tram has you in the middle of it in minutes. That distance, and the garden it ends in, is the booking case in a sentence. ## A boutique base, one block from the sand Of the 124 residences in the building, only ten are released for holiday stays, and each is presented on the site by its apartment number with its own photographs – you book the exact apartment you will sleep in, not a category and a stock photo. Every one runs to 178 square metres or more, with a wraparound balcony, a full kitchen and a proper laundry. Outlooks range across ocean, river, marina, garden and pool depending on the number you choose, so the site shows each individually and there are no surprises on arrival. That scale earns its keep across a festival weekend. A long Saturday in the Broadbeach crowd is a different day when you come back to cook dinner on a wide balcony rather than fight for a table on Surf Parade. The gardens run to their own quiet rhythm – a large indoor heated pool for after a hot day, an outdoor pool among the lawns for the morning before, an indoor and an outdoor spa, a sauna, a full-size tennis court at the back, and a private marina on the river behind the building. Mornings on Tedder Avenue, five minutes' walk away, keep a local pace whatever Broadbeach is doing. ## A free festival across Broadbeach Groundwater is run by [Experience Gold Coast](https://corporate.experiencegoldcoast.com/) with support from the Queensland Government, and it sits unusually among Australian festivals – no ticketed perimeter, no main-arena gates, no wristbands. Broadbeach itself is the venue. Stages go up across Kurrawa Park beside the surf life saving club, along the Victoria Avenue mall, in the Oracle Boulevard area to the south, and on Surf Parade a block back from the beach, with a long list of pubs and venues besides. The 2025 program ran 14 stages with more than 40 artists; the 2026 lineup is announced in the months before October, and the [official festival site](https://groundwatercmf.com/) and app carry the precinct map and the day-by-day schedule when they land. It is a genuinely family-friendly weekend – beginners' line dancing on the Beach Deck, a Sunday bluegrass breakfast, country cocktails on the mall, the Farm Angels charity tent at Kurrawa Park – and the daytime program runs all ages. ![Beach with swimmers and waders along shoreline with breaking waves](/assets/photos/location/pexels-gregory-mellotte-59230857-7968254.jpg) ## Getting in and out The tram does the work. The G:link stop nearest Contessa is a short walk from the residence – about fifteen minutes – and the line runs south through Surfers Paradise to Broadbeach North, the festival's official drop-off, a few minutes down the coast. Kurrawa Park is a two-minute walk from that stop. Leave the car in the free basement parking on Friday afternoon and let the tram handle the weekend – Broadbeach roads close in pieces and slow to a crawl by Saturday lunch. ## The shape of a festival weekend Thursday to Monday is the booking that suits it best. Thursday is an easy arrival – the precinct is still going up, the gardens are yours. Friday runs light – the first of the festival days, gentle enough to find your feet. Saturday and Sunday are the full programs – long, loud, worth every hour, and better still for knowing a quiet balcony is waiting a few tram stops north. Monday is the reward – a slow coffee on Tedder, a walk on the sand, the city back to itself. Full payment is taken 48 hours before arrival rather than at booking; check-in is 2 to 5 pm, check-out 8 to 10 am. ## Book for 16 to 18 October [**Check availability and reserve your apartment**](/accommodation/), or read more about [the residence and its facilities](/stay/) and the two acres of landscaped gardens on the river. The 2026 lineup, the festival map and the stage schedule appear on the [Groundwater Country Music Festival](https://groundwatercmf.com/) site and its app in the lead-up to October.