Byron Bay Bluesfest
former Australian blues and roots music festival held in Tyagarah, New South Wales
Byron Bay Bluesfest was an Australian music festival held over the Easter long weekend in the Byron Bay region of New South Wales. It began in 1990 at the Arts Factory as the East Coast Annual Blues Festival and was later known as the East Coast International Blues & Roots Music Festival. The event presented blues, roots and a broad range of other musical genres.
The festival subsequently moved through several locations, including Belongil Fields and Red Devil Park, before Byron Events Farm at Tyagarah became its final home. It also hosted the Boomerang program, a festival within the festival that showcased Indigenous performers and music, art and culture.
The 2020 and 2021 editions were cancelled during the COVID-19 pandemic, before Bluesfest returned in 2022. In August 2024, festival director Peter Noble announced that the 2025 event would be the last, but organisers announced a 2026 return during the 2025 festival. The 2026 event was cancelled less than three weeks before it was due to begin, and the two Bluesfest entities entered liquidation.
History
Bluesfest began at the Arts Factory in Byron Bay in 1990 as the East Coast Annual Blues Festival. The inaugural event attracted approximately 6,000 people.
“Byron Bay Bluesfest” enters the record as former Australian blues and roots music festival held in Tyagarah, New South Wales. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Byron, Bluesfest and former can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 17, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5328107. Authority coordinates are -28.587, 153.547. 2 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1990, 2020, 2021 and 2022.
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This entry incorporates text from “Byron Bay Bluesfest” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.