It feels like only yesterday that CubaDupa 2026 wrapped up, bringing to an end one of the most successful editions of the beloved Te Whanganui-a-Tara Wellington festival.
Earlier this month, organisers revealed some impressive statistics about this year’s edition. A frankly ridiculous (complimentary) 1,291 artists put on 426 performances across the weekend of March 28th-29th. (I’m not even going to attempt to work out how many performances per artist that equates to.)
The festival boasted 114 vendors, with vendors reporting 82% increased turnover on CubaDupa weekend. The festival “brings so much joy, energy, and colour to the streets,” one vendor, Somtum Thai, said. “It’s amazing to see more and more people coming together, celebrating, and enjoying the friendly atmosphere.”
The 2026 programme featured 58.2% female and gender-diverse artists, 38 unique ethnicities, and 16 commissioned works. 75 hardy volunteers contributed over 386 hours of unpaid work to bring an important cultural event to their city.
At a time where live music feels so perilous in our country, CubaDupa organisers are right to celebrate the wins.
Expressions of interest for artists are now open for CubaDupa 2027.
Organisers say they’re “looking for bold, joyful, and innovative work across music, theatre, visual arts, dance, movement, and installation. If it’s original and electrifies the streets, we want to hear about it.”
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The festival has four main target areas for 2027: “Wellington-based artists in their first decade of practice developing new work”; “isual art proposals for installations, decor, or video works”; “theatre works ready to be developed for the street”; and “artists performing in te reo Māori.”
If you fancy showcasing your music at one of New Zealand’s best festivals, you must apply before August 7th. CubaDupa will the notify successful applicants by October 23rd. Find out more about CubaDupa Artist EOIs here.
Read our in-depth recap of the festival’s 2026 edition below, penned by local writer Éimhín O’Shea.
We were overwhelmed in the best possible way with a schedule that few Aotearoa festivals could hold a candle to, all for free as the eclectic capital city truly put it on for the weekend.
Wandering streets with kids dripping ice cream cones onto the pavement metres away from tattooed punks moshing to eardrum bursting rock, CubaDupa deeply embodied the soul of the city. Every musical predilection was well served across the two days, and 40+ stages, as the biggest acts in the country performed shoulder to shoulder with both the internationally renowned and the yet-to-be-known, curating a weekend that was everything one hoped for and more.
This year’s festival pulled big names from around ngā motu as well as overseas, but it also celebrated the local scene. The Hotel Bristol Eyegum stage in particular represented the latter, playing host to back-to-back sets by local rockers Dropper and Cruelly among others, which left our ears ringing as we stumbled back out onto Cuba Street.
One of the most special parts of CubaDupa is how the esoteric finds a home here alongside the mainstream, with ex-Ōtepoti Dunedin noise-pop artist beet-wix employing a Nintendo DS console and flute for a wonderfully weird afternoon set pulling in anyone who walked by to check out one of the more innovative artists working in the city.
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Lynchpin venue of local alternative music Valhalla once again turned their car park into one of the best parties in the city, with a lineup precisely dialled in. They hosted perhaps the weekend’s biggest humble brag of a booking, with lines trailing far out the gates for 2025 Taite Music Prize-winning electronic artist MOKOTRON. We arrived there a full hour early to make sure we caught it, with no chance of being bored with an excellent Baeoli playing beforehand.
The taonga puoro-wielding MOKOTRON pulling a crowd that filled the neighbouring car park with avid listeners, some even scaling the surrounding buildings to get a glimpse of one of the most exciting Aotearoa artists of the last few years.
While we indulged our type-A impulses into a timed-out itinerary, it would’ve been a disservice to not take the time to wander into whatever caught our ears on our travels, with two of the best discoveries of the weekend being Naarm Melbourne-based Gut Health, with danceable rock reminiscent of Wolf Alice or Wet Leg, and Ōtautahi Christchurch-based punk trio Bin Day, both at the Wellington Airport Ngā Taniwha stage.
Music was far from the only thing happening over the weekend, with arrays of parades, performance art, and activities provided to give our ears a break. Te Herenga Waka’s Te Aro campus hosted ‘Te Whanga (The Cove)’, which offered a welcome respite from the inevitable overstimulation of the weekend with opportunities to ‘be a tree’, peruse and learn how to make zines, an ‘ask a philosopher’ booth, and much more.
CubaDupa ramped up over the first day, shifting from an afternoon of running back and forth between stages to an evening of fighting through lines to get to the embarrassment of riches that rendered printed programmes worth their weight in gold at any pre-party.
We found ourselves dashing between the Wellington Airport Ngā Taniwha and the Vic Uni Glover Park stages to make the most of a stacked two-hour block of RIIKI REID, Dick Move, and Mokomokai.
The biggest mistake one could make would be to call it a day after Saturday, with the Sunday fare pulling us out of bed from our post-Saturday coma to catch some of the most uplifting performances of the weekend.
The Vic Uni Glover Park stage hosted the closest thing to a super-group Wellington indie music might have to offer as Sig Wilder and Friends (made up of Sig, dream-pop queen Sofia Machray, Tahini Bikini’s Mads Taylor, and Mystery Waitresses’ Tessa Dillon) serenaded a crowd that only grew as they delivered a transcendent set that healed our by-then tired bodies. That brought us back to life for the rest of the day, just in time for the Pasifika-infused indie rock of Tamaki Makaurau’s LEAO as a gentle rain fell on the crowd.
We closed our CubaDupa with one last boogie to the ineffable Star Time. Their energetic and joy-infused Afrobeats may best lay claim to embodying the spirit of the festival, as the band, made up of charismatic lead singer Francois Judah and his entourage utilising every instrument imaginable, squeezed every last drop of energy out of the crowd for a euphoric last hurrah.
@cubadupa It’s like a reward 🥹🫶 #wellington #wellingtonnz #cubadupa #festival
CubaDupa served as an unanswerable challenge to any claim that Wellington is dying, as a 100,000+ strong crowd partied together long into the night and showed up again for another round the following day.
Wellington has had its fair share of heartbreak in the last year with government cuts, burst sewage pipes, and severe storms each leaving their mark, but CubaDupa showed the city at its communal and creative best. O
CubaDupa is a fixture in the hearts and calendars of Wellingtonians each and every year for one simple fact: it’s the most fun weekend we could possibly ask for.
