CORE Festival will make its Australian debut at Flemington Racecourse in Melbourne on 28 November 2026, bringing the international electronic music brand to Australia for the first time with a one-day event that runs from 2pm to 11pm. The Melbourne edition is for patrons 18 and over, and pre-sale tickets will open at 9am AEST on Friday, 5 June.
For electronic music fans in Melbourne, the draw is immediate: Honey Dijon, Moodymann, TSHA and Dino Lenny are all on the bill, along with a back-to-back set from Mall Grab and Effy. The Mano stage will also return, with Kobosil, Daria Kolosova, HiTMiLØW, Lola Voss b2b Billy Currie, fumi and Noise Mafia b2b Peterblue among the names announced for it.
The Australian date extends CORE to its fifth continent, after previous editions across Europe, North America, South America and Asia. It is being billed as the festival brand’s first local edition in Australia, and the move gives Melbourne a one-day flagship event at a venue better known for major sporting crowds than club nights.
What is still unclear is how many people will actually get in. Organisers said registrations for the Melbourne edition have already run ahead of levels seen for earlier CORE events, but that interest will not show its full weight until pre-sales and the general public sale begin. CORE has also lined up a ticketing partnership with Humanitix, a sign that the push is now shifting from announcement to conversion.
That is the next test. If the demand shown in registrations carries into ticket sales, Melbourne will have landed one of the festival’s biggest international steps yet; if it does not, the debut will still mark expansion, but not necessarily the scale organisers are hoping for.
