Direct from Broadway, the Australian premiere of The Encounter is an award-winning and technologically ground-breaking work from UK Company, Complicite directed by Simon McBurney.

From internationally renowned UK company, Cheek by Jowl, and Pushkin Theatre Moscow, Declan Donnellan directs Shakespeare's Measure for Measure in Russian.

Winner of the Helpmann Award for Best New Australian Work, Ladies in Black is Queensland Theatre's new musical directed by Simon Philips featuring original music from Tim Finn (Crowded House).

Music headliners include Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds and PJ Harvey. Other highlights include 1967 Music in the Key of Yes, a special Sydney Opera House concert to mark the 50th anniversary of Australia's 1967 Indigenous rights referendum.

Bayala is a series of events and exhibitions celebrating Sydney's Indigenous heritage and reawakening local language.

Hyde Park's much loved festival hub Meriton Festival Village is doubling its free offering and features a variety of circus, comedy, contemporary music and cabaret acts, headlined by male burlesque/cabaret outfit, Briefs.

In Sydney's famous outdoor venue The Domain, crowd favourites Symphony under the Stars and Opera in the Domain return.

Coming to Sydney Festival as an Australian exclusive, The Beach is a joyous monochromatic installation of 1.1 million recyclable white balls by US design studio Snarkitecture.

Artist Ben Quilty co-curates the first major exhibition of Myuran Sukumaran's artworks, painted during his incarceration at Bali's Kerobokan jail. Sydney Dance Company responds to powerful artworks spanning two centuries from Art Gallery of NSW's exhibition Nude: Art from the Tate collection.

A spotlight on Canadian artists includes Inheritor Album from Company 605; Gabriel Dharmoo's Anthropologies Imaginaires; Huff from Native Earth Performing Arts; and iD from Cirque Eloize.

SOURCE: Sydney Festival