It hit 39 degrees on the last Sunday of January. Most young Sydneysiders weren’t at the beach – we were running up and down King Street, catching gigs and meeting up with friends in local bars for the King Street Summer Crawl 2026. No less than 24 hours earlier, thousands of us were dancing around a single radio listening to Triple J’s Hottest 100 Countdown. Now we’re pouring into King Street in Newtown to show up for local artists and bands. It felt very circular – from rooting for Aussie artists on a large scale to lining up for them down King Street.
For the newcomers, here’s the deal ...
King Street Summer Crawl is a free one-day music festival hosted on, you guessed it, King Street in Newtown. From 12 pm to midnight, almost every bar along the street has free entry to live music and hosts over 200 local artists. The Crawl spans 40 venues, from Hermann’s Bar at the University of Sydney, all the way down to The Vic on the Park in Marrickville. After the success of last year’s July Crawl, I was sold on the Summer Crawl.
Be honest: how often do you really go to a gig if there isn’t a Ticketmaster war first?
Be honest: how often do you really go to a gig if there isn’t a Ticketmaster war first? So what compelled so many of us to opt for concerts and sweaty dive bars over a cool and calm day at the beach? Well, to put it simply, the answer is wanting to be around people again.
Arriving earlier in the day, as King Street was preparing for the masses, I spoke to some of the event coordinators behind the crawl at Websters Bar, Kelly’s on King and Mary’s. When asked about the rise in sobriety culture among Gen Z, all three coordinators told me that the crawl had very little to do with profit and was geared towards building community in the wake of COVID and giving Sydney’s music scene a pulse again. And this could not have been clearer out on the street – with every man and his dog out on the town, you could really see the return of Sydney’s former musical soul.
The post-lockout moment Sydney’s been waiting for
There was also a notable buzz during the interviews about the dismantling of New South Wales’s ‘lockout laws’, especially as the last of the lockout-era rules are officially on the way out, and hopes that events such as the crawl won’t be so few and far between.
From the jump, Kelly’s on King drew a massive crowd. With their open windows and stage placed strategically close to their doors, the music basically did the marketing for them. After a quick pit stop at Yo-Chi, I was drawn in by Supahoney, a band that’s been playing together for nearly a decade. They played not only songs from their own discography, but also a Jeff Buckley cover. After their set, I spoke with band members Ben Lopes (guitar), Ciaran Heraghty (drums) and Declan Heraghty (bass/guitar). They were still buzzing from their set and were clear about what events like the King Street Summer Crawl do for local bands: you don’t need a big co-sign, you just need a street full of people willing to wander in. The band is also optimistic that Sydney’s music scene is making a comeback, and that things are changing for the better, coining Newtown as the ‘epicentre’ of the Sydney music scene.
Sydney’s music scene is making a comeback and that things are changing for the better, coining Newtown as the ‘epicentre’ of the Sydney music scene.
Not long after, I watched alt-rock band Vertebrae take over Waywards Ballroom. Making my way up to the gig, I didn’t know what this band had in store for us. The true benefit of events like this is that there is no algorithm for them. You hear music you like, and you go in – it’s as simple as that.
With harmonicas and a megaphone flying around, this band was experimental but still held to the original garage-rock roots. Honestly, if you closed your eyes, it felt like you were at a 2000s garage gig.
Trying to schedule the unschedulable
Now, try as you might, it’s nearly impossible to create an itinerary for this day, because believe me, I tried. No amount of scheduling or planning can prepare you for the electric energy you’re met with as soon as you walk out of Newtown Station – not to mention the mind-boggling venue lines, which can turn actually being able to watch the sets you intended into a bit of a game of chance. Kitty of the Valley already had a big red circle with hearts around it on my list for 6:30 pm at Mary’s, so I joined the queue early, which was already snaking all the way to Camperdown Memorial Park, and hoped for the best.
No amount of research and scheduling or planning can prepare anyone for the electric energy you are met with as soon as you walk out of Newtown station
Clearly, every other diva on the street had the same idea because the venue hit capacity early. Inside, the air was thick and it was loud, and there was really no hiding my sweat patches at that point because everyone else was rocking them too. Allegra Pezzullo, the frontwoman of the four-piece, didn’t so much ‘perform’ as conduct the room, with everyone moving on command: get low, jump, repeat. For a city that keeps acting like live music is too hard, this felt like proof that people will cop it even when the weather has us fighting for our lives.
The night ended loud and messy, with a flood of people making their way home. Stumbling down King Street, demolishing a chicken burger from Newtown Chicken Shop, I felt grateful to be young, dumb and surrounded by people following their ears to the next bar. This was a taste of the Sydney music scene’s former glory; a pre-COVID world, if you want to call it that. I’m trying to look beyond my algorithm, so the next time I hear music bleeding out of a bar, I’ll walk in.
