Presented by the City of Melbourne, Now or Never is a new seventeen-day festival exploring the intersection of art, ideas, sound, and technology in various venues across the city from 17 August to 2 September.
Now or Never brings together more than 300 artists, musicians, composers, changemakers, future thinkers and innovators. The inaugural event will showcase Melbourne as a place to discover, learn and play – with daytime programming trickling into late-night culture, immersive digital experiences, and adventurous performances, stirring discourse and more.

Theatre of Thunder, supplied Courtesy the artists and Now or Never, Melbourne
Highlights include the 1.2-kilometre Now or Never Art Trail in Docklands, curated by Experimenta and featuring works, from a never-ending parade of friendly AI-generated monsters to an epic light beam that reaches towards eternity, by Michaela Gleave, Jarra Karalinar Steel and Jon McCormack, Theatre of Thunder, Georgie Pinn, Universal Everything (UK), and Justine Emard (FRA).
Neversphere, a giant pop-up dome, will immerse audiences in a bustling program of film, projected across a 360-degree screen in the Melbourne Museum forecourt. A highlight is XYZZY, a visual cosmology by Jess Johnson and Simon Ward, with hand-drawn compositions transformed into an animated web of flesh mandalas, self-replicating architecture, undulating worms, hallucinogenic patterns, and messianic alien deities.
SACRA, by Hungarian artist and 3D-mapping pioneer Laszlo Bordos, brings the Shrine of Remembrance into motion through a series of sculptural illuminations and projections highlighting the cultural significance of the iconic building as a place of commemoration. And Never Permanent, presented by Semi Permanent, is a full-day program comprising a series of keynote talks and panel discussions celebrating and exploring the rich intersection of creativity and technology in the modern world.