It's Cup season at QT Canberra, and this year, your place has been reserved at the capital's most fashionable celebration.
Expect canapés you'd run in stilettos for and soirées to satisfy every kind of frill-seeker. Because this spring, it's all about the fashion.
From Capitol Bar & Grill to the sun-drenched deck, settle in. There's flavour on every plate, and cocktails poured with precision. Step into the spotlight for Fashions on the Field, where standout looks will be rewarded with bottles of Mumm and iconic Tom Dixon prize packs. A look worth showing off deserves something worth toasting to.
Your ticket includes a glass of Mumm Champagne on arrival, luxe pours that rival the outfits, roaming canapés and seasonal bites, access to Patrón, Aperol and Hendrick's Gin activations, live entertainment, and entry into Fashions on the Field.
Celebrate the Race That Stops the Nation at Woden with great food, drinks and all the Melbourne Cup action live on the big screens. Whether you're dressing up for a special afternoon or keeping things casual with friends, there are two ways to enjoy the day.
Melbourne Cup Buffet
12:30pm | Top of the Cross | Bookings essential
Dress up, raise a glass and enjoy an afternoon of seafood, sparkling, sweeps, prizes and entertainment, with all the Melbourne Cup action on the big screens.
Members AUD105 | Non-members AUD125
Children under 12 AUD59
Melbourne Cup Platters
Prefer to keep it casual? Grab your mates and share a platter while watching the Melbourne Cup action. Our platter features marinated prawns, smoked salmon, smoked chicken breast, leg ham, aged cheddar, Mediterranean vegetables, olives, rocket, rustic focaccia, hummus and beetroot dip.
Members AUD75 | Non-members AUD88
Platters must be pre-ordered.
Experience Melbourne Cup Day with an elegant outdoor celebration in the stunning heritage surrounds of Hyatt Hotel Canberra.
Celebrate the race that stops the nation surrounded by the beauty of their landscaped rose courtyard, the perfect backdrop for a sophisticated afternoon of dining, fashion and entertainment. Enjoy a package fit for royalty featuring a chilled seafood bar, Australian grill, gourmet slider station, artisan charcuterie and cheeses and a live tiramisu bar, crafted to be enjoyed while taking in the relaxed elegance of an alfresco race day experience.
The Innovation Showcase brings Canberra's innovation ecosystem together in one afternoon. It has taken different forms over the years, from tradeshows to conference-style gatherings, always with the same aim: connecting the people, ideas, and energy that move the region forward.
These showcases are open to everyone. You don't need a business, a startup idea, or a particular background. Come along to hear from innovators and entrepreneurs across the network, plus voices from the national network.
If you're curious about innovation, looking for inspiration, or just want to meet people in Canberra's entrepreneurial community, this day is for you. Real stories, what's emerging, and room to talk, in a setting that's easy to walk into.
In the 90-minute masterclass/workshop, members of Number Junky share their approach to performing, composing and improvising in odd meter. Drawing on the trio's original repertoire and extensive experience working with irregular meter, the session explores how odd meter can become a natural and expressive part of music-making.
The session will include live performance demonstrations, discussion of selected works from Number Junky's repertoire, and practical exercises designed to help participants develop confidence with irregular rhythmic structures.
This workshop is suitable for musicians, composers and improvisers of all backgrounds; however, some previous knowledge in music theory and metering will help participants get the most out of this masterclass.
Participants are encouraged to bring their instrument.
The Friends of the National Library of Australia present their annual collection viewing event. This year's focus is on birds – kookaburras, cockatoos, budgies and more feathered friends! This special evening will start with a short presentation from renowned ornithologist and author Dr Penny Olsen, who curated the collection of display material.
Following the presentation, guests will have the opportunity to view many of these treasures and speak with Library staff about the collection, before enjoying some light refreshments and conversations with Friends.
Come and marvel at the beauty of birds and how they have been represented in the Library's collection.
Get ready for a night of glitter, giggles and gloriously unhinged fun at Verity Lane Market Drag Bingo
Taking over the Louie Louie stage on the first Wednesday of every month, Drag Bingo is your midweek excuse to let loose, laugh loud and lean into the fabulous. Hosted by our larger-than-life drag performers, the night delivers five high-energy games of bingo, outrageous banter, crowd interaction, and plenty of moments you'll be talking about long after the last ball drops.
Make a night of it by arriving early and grabbing dinner from the Market Hall. With a wide range of food options just steps away, you can fuel up before the fun begins.
Once the clock hits 6:30pm, the chaos kicks off on the Louie Louie stage. Expect bold performances, quick wit, and an atmosphere that's fun, inclusive and unapologetically fabulous.
Whether you're coming with friends, colleagues, a date, or flying solo, Drag Bingo at Verity Lane Market promises an unforgettable night filled with laughter, colour and community.
Sparkle up your Wednesday — Drag Bingo awaits.
Art with a purpose. Some of Australia's most talented Greek-Australian artists unite for a bold AHEPA Australia fundraising exhibition, giving back to the community that shaped them.
Powerful paintings, sculpture, photography and illustration, all rooted in Greek heritage.
Every artwork sold supports research at the ANU Centre for Personalised Medicine.
The 2026 Craft + Design Canberra Festival celebrates Canberra as a creative capital and showcases the work of over 500 creatives, connecting them with the Canberra community.
The 2026 Festival responds to the theme of Dissent and advocates for creativity as a powerful tool for questioning, challenging and reshaping societal norms. The program explores design for environmental and social impact, sustainability and accessibility in creative practice, and the future of Canberra as a city. Woven through the program is the value of the handmade and the locally made, which builds skill and wellbeing, keeps material knowledge moving between generations, and has proven environmental sustainability.
Across ten days, more than 120 activations bring Dissent to Canberra: symposiums, events, talks, tours, workshops, open studios, design markets, and performance in fashion, dance and theatre. Across November, exhibitions and public art carry the theme into the galleries and public spaces of the city.
Erin Dickson's first Australian solo exhibition brings together the full breadth of her diverse practice in a bold new body of work that fuses traditional craft skills with digital technologies. This irreverent and maximalist exhibition navigates the tension between humour and darker subjects such as grief, anger, and isolation.
British and working-class, Dickson thrives on the friction between 'high' and 'low' culture. She integrates endangered craft traditions, including glass gilding, with elements drawn from contemporary life, commercial signage, Twitch streaming, and internet memes. By colliding Australian and British cultural references, the exhibition interrogates what belongs in the gallery space, and how flexible our interpretation of craftsmanship can be. The artist has been supported through the VACDF Major Commissioning Projects initiative from Creative Australia.
See the Canberra Glassworks website for the full 2026 program and aligned events as such Gallery Floor Talk.
Canberra Glassworks 2026 exhibition program is supported by artsACT and Creative Australia.
Delightly is an act of dissent against the disappearance of scientific glassblowing. This rare and endangered craft skill risks being lost as scientific glass fabricators retire and few makers remain who can fabricate borosilicate glassware for experimental apparatus. Created by artist Harriet Schwarzrock, this exhibition reclaims that knowledge through sculptural experimentation, transforming scientific methods into objects of wonder and delight.
At the heart of Delightly is plasma illumination, a fascinating intersection of glass vessels, atmospheric manipulation and electromagnetic energy that yields luminous objects sometimes described as an aurora in a bottle. Working with salvaged borosilicate glass and traditional laboratory apparatus, Schwarzrock produces apothecary like vessels containing the fourth state of matter, plasma, whose luminous behaviour shifts and pulses with viewer proximity.
Visitors are invited into a suspended, darkened installation space, fabricated from non-conductive recycled materials, conjuring an experience of a phosphorescing Wunder-Kammer or cabinet of curiosity. A kaleidoscopic mosaic with multiple viewing ports encourages playful and multisensory engagement between individuals and this extraordinary state of matter.
Delightly bridges art and science, taking scientific practice out of the museum and offering wonder to children and adults alike. The exhibition reinforces Canberra's reputation as a centre for innovative contemporary glass practice and a place where curious, boundary pushing thinking manifests in tangible and delightful experiences.
We are living through overlapping emergencies, ecological collapse, housing insecurity, geopolitical conflict and systemic inequality. For many, emergency is not a singular event but an ongoing condition.
EMERGENCY: Signal, Repair, Adapt is a major exhibition presented as part of the 2026 Craft and Design Canberra Festival. Bringing together artists and designers working across ceramics, glass, textiles and media, the exhibition examines what it means to make objects in a time of disruption.
Craft and design operate at a different tempo to the speed of political rhetoric and digital information cycles. Materials hold memory, clay records touch, glass responds to force, fibres stretch, fray and mend. Through these processes, making becomes a form of critical inquiry, revealing the pressures and systems shaping both matter and society. In an age of mass production and disposability, work made locally, by hand and at a human scale, becomes its own form of resistance, a refusal of the standardised and the instant in favour of the considered, the repaired and the lasting.
Drawing on the 2026 festival theme of Dissent, EMERGENCY | Signal, Repair, Adapt asks how making can function as a form of critical action. At its heart, the exhibition affirms the power of creative thinking to meet problems that resist easy answers, to imagine alternatives where established systems have failed.
