Australian touring music festival Spilt Milk will make Geelong its new Victorian home for at least five years, with combined support from both Visit Victoria and City of Greater Geelong confirming the festival’s place in the region until 2030.
Produced and curated by Kicks Entertainment, Spilt Milk first arrived in Victoria in 2019 and has since grown into one of the state’s biggest annual music events – and the only one of its scale delivered in regional Victoria, with four editions staged in neighbouring Ballarat before the move to Geelong.
Spilt Milk has pumped more than $46.7 million* into the Victorian economy across four editions since 2019*. The 2025 festival – headlined by generational rapper Kendrick Lamar – generated $17.2 million on its own, with 34,100 people travelling in from outside the region and attendance growing from 28,602 in 2019 to 38,729 in 2025.
Nearly 116,000 out-of-town guests have now made the trip across four festivals, filling every commercial bed in the region each festival weekend and pushing demand into surrounding towns.
It’s an audience the state has been chasing. Visit Victoria’s Experience Victoria 2033 strategy positions regional events as key drivers of intrastate travel, particularly among younger audiences – and that is precisely the crowd Spilt Milk delivers, with 61% of its out-of-town visitors aged 18 to 24.
“Geelong is the perfect stage for the festival’s next five years, and we want to thank Visit Victoria and the City of Greater Geelong for backing what Spilt Milk can do – their support means we can keep proving that a world-class festival doesn’t need a capital city and keep bringing tens of thousands of young people to regional Victoria every December,” said Director and Co-Founder of Kicks Entertainment, Ryan Sabet.
“Bringing Spilt Milk to Geelong is a fantastic opportunity for our region, most importantly, for our young people. These kinds of experiences give them the chance to connect with friends, create lasting memories, and enjoy world-class music close to home. I’m proud that Geelong is attracting these major events,” said State Member for Geelong, Christine Couzens MP.
The festival has delivered a result few events anywhere can claim: in 2025, 100% of surveyed local Victorian attendees said Spilt Milk enhances community life, while 97% rated music, arts and cultural events as extremely or very important to quality of life in their city. The line-up backs the sentiment – of the 43 acts programmed in 2025, 33 were Australian, and 15 were Victorian, including five drawn from within 100 kilometres of the festival site.
Visitors leave as advocates, too: 47% said their opinion of regional Victoria had improved after their visit, 41% are more likely to recommend the festival location to others, and more than 84% posted from the festival on social platforms – authentic, peer-to-peer destination promotion that money can’t buy.
Since launching in 2016, Spilt Milk has grown into Australia’s largest regional touring music festival, featuring internationally renowned artists such as Kendrick Lamar, Doechii, Post Malone, Lorde, Flume, Childish Gambino, Khalid, Dom Dolla, Latto and Steve Lacy, and selling out venues year after year – sometimes within minutes of going on sale.
2026 is set to be another momentous year for the festival, with the line-up dropping soon. Fans can sign up to presale for early access to tickets at www.spilt-milk.com.au.
Image: Spilt Milk (Ballarat, 2025) – photo by Jordan Munns