Ever since the cancellation of Australia’s biggest annual celebration of EDM (and not wearing a shirt), Stereo-heads have been making do with the frankly huge range of other dance-tinged festies Australia has to offer, but now they can start rest easy, or start shredding, as the massive Ultra Music Festival has announced the events it has planned for us.
As part of the ‘Ultra Worldwide Expansion’, Australia will be copping new events as soon as next year, starting with the single-stage one-dayer ‘The Road to Ultra: Australia’ coming to Melbourne in February, and then moving on to a full-blown multi-day ‘Ultra: Australia’ across Melbourne and Sydney in 2019.
The new events arrive alongside a push into Asia, and follows the announcement of plans to come to Australia made last month.
“Over the past few years, Ultra Worldwide has ventured to many locations across the globe,” organisers say. “We are thrilled to announce that Ultra Worldwide will now be expanding to Ibiza, China, India, and Australia!”
Despite the insistence of organisers upon Stereosonic’s cancellation that the festival was only taking a year off and would return in 2017, it wasn’t to be, and the lack of a truly massive EDM event has left a gaping void in Australia’s festival landscape that Ultra is more than capable of filling.
Stereo ended in unfortunate circumstances following the drug-related deaths of two attendees in 2015 and the bankruptcy of the U.S.-based parent company SFX after it acquired the festival in 2013 for $75m, and it remains to be seen how the festival landscape in Australia will handle the return of an event of this scale.
For now, head to Ultra Australia’s Facebook page to keep up with all the latest happenings, and get ready to renew that gym membership.
