Curious at the Sydney Opera House brings leading thinkers, writers, artists and cultural voices together across October and November 2026 to examine the ideas shaping our lives.
On the edge of the harbour, where ferries move across the water and the white shells of the Sydney Opera House catch the changing light, there is always something being performed. But not everything here arrives with music, costumes or a script.
This spring, some of the most interesting performances will begin with a question.
Curious, the Sydney Opera House's talks and ideas series, returns in 2026 with a programme of conversations that moves between culture, politics, food, technology, literature, memory and the strange territory of human consciousness. Across October and November, writers, thinkers, journalists, performers and other cultural voices will gather at Bennelong Point to examine the subjects that occupy public conversation and, in many cases, the private thoughts of people sitting in the audience.
The setting matters. There are few places in Sydney better suited to thinking about big questions than the Opera House, where the harbour is constantly changing outside and the city continues its everyday movement beyond the walls.
Curious does not attempt to provide one tidy answer to the world around us. Instead, its premise is conversation: an opportunity to listen, reconsider assumptions and spend an hour or two following an idea somewhere unexpected.
Curious Begins With A Question
The programme runs from 4 October to 4 November 2026, with the majority of its sessions concentrated around 4 October before the series continues with a further major event in November.
The range of subjects is deliberately broad.
On 4 October, comedian and writer Magda Szubanski will discuss her memoir and the experiences behind it. British-Palestinian chef Sami Tamimi will explore food, family and the idea of home. Other sessions turn towards democracy, media, technology, literature and the changing shape of society. On 4 November, American writer Michael Pollan will consider one of the most difficult questions of all: what consciousness actually is.
Taken individually, the events have little obvious connection. Taken together, they reveal the territory Curious is interested in exploring.
What makes a home? How does a society change? What happens to democracy when political loyalties become less certain? What can literature tell us about the present? Where does consciousness come from? And what happens when technology begins to challenge assumptions that once seemed permanent?
These are not necessarily questions that can be settled in a single sitting.
That is part of the appeal of an ideas programme. The audience arrives knowing that there is something it wants to understand, but not necessarily knowing what the answer should be.
A Morning With Magda Szubanski
The first Sunday of the programme begins in the Concert Hall at 11.45am with Magda Szubanski.
For many Australians, Szubanski is familiar through decades of television and comedy, from Kath & Kim to her wider work as a performer and public figure. Her Curious conversation takes a more personal direction, drawing on her memoir, I Can't Tell You, But I Will. The session explores love, loss, caring for her mother and her experience of becoming a prominent voice in Australia's marriage equality campaign.
The subject gives the morning a different atmosphere from a conventional author appearance.
Memoir can be an act of looking backwards, but the best memoir conversations also reveal something about the present. Personal experiences become a way of considering larger questions about family, public life, ageing, responsibility and the things people choose to say when private experience enters public conversation.
The session runs for approximately 60 minutes and is suitable for all ages.
Afterwards, there is the harbour to return to. A walk around Bennelong Point, a coffee nearby or the short journey into Circular Quay provides the sort of breathing space that suits a morning spent listening to somebody reflect on a life lived partly in the public eye.
Curious Looks At Food, Memory And Home
Later that afternoon, Curious turns towards food.
Sami Tamimi's Garden begins at 2.15pm on 4 October, bringing the celebrated British-Palestinian chef and writer to the Opera House for a conversation about food, family and life beyond his work with Ottolenghi. At its centre is a simple question: what does it mean for a dish to taste like home?
It is a question that extends well beyond cooking.
Food carries geography with it. A recipe can contain a landscape, a childhood, a migration story or a memory of a particular kitchen. Ingredients travel, techniques change and dishes acquire new meanings as people move between countries and generations.
In Sydney, a city shaped by migration, such questions have a particular resonance. The food on a plate is often a record of somewhere else, even when the meal is being eaten several thousand kilometres from where its ingredients or traditions originated.
That makes a conversation about food at the Opera House more than a discussion of recipes. It becomes a way of considering identity and memory through something tangible.
The Questions Behind A Changing Democracy
The programme then moves into more complicated territory.
Can It Happen Here? Australia’s Democratic Crossroads brings Waleed Aly, Rick Morton and Amy Remeikis together on 4 October to examine questions around Australian democracy and the political changes taking place both here and overseas. The session runs for approximately 60 minutes and is suitable for all ages.
The event is framed around whether Australia's political culture and democratic institutions can withstand pressures being experienced across many Western democracies.
That makes the conversation distinctly of its moment, but also part of a much older tradition of public discussion. Democracies depend not only on elections and institutions, but on the willingness of citizens to debate what those institutions should do and how they should respond when public confidence changes.
A talk such as this does not remove the complexity. Instead, it places several perspectives in a room and gives the audience time to listen.
For visitors to the Opera House, that may be one of the most useful aspects of the Curious programme. The building becomes not simply a place to receive entertainment, but a public space for difficult subjects.
Literature, Technology And The Shape Of The Future
Elsewhere in the programme, the questions become more speculative.
Octavia Butler Told You This Would Happen looks at the work of the influential American science fiction writer, whose novels imagined environmental upheaval, political instability, technological change and societies under pressure. The discussion asks what it means to read Butler's speculative fiction in a world where some of her imagined concerns now feel strikingly familiar.
Then there is Where's the AI Off Switch?, which turns towards one of the defining technological questions of the present.
The juxtaposition is revealing. One conversation begins with fiction written decades ago, while another considers technology developing in real time. Both ask a similar question: how do we imagine a future before we fully understand what is coming?
That uncertainty is becoming an increasingly familiar part of modern life.
Artificial intelligence, climate change, changing political structures and new forms of communication all create situations where the future is difficult to describe with certainty. Literature can provide one way of imagining it. Technology provides another.
Curious places those conversations side by side.
From Media And Power To The Mystery Of Consciousness
The programme also examines the machinery behind public life.
Bonfire of the Murdochs explores the influence of the Murdoch media empire and its place within Australian and international public discourse. Caligula on the Potomac looks towards contemporary American politics through a historical lens, while One Revolution After Another examines the forces behind major social and political change.
These sessions sit alongside the cultural and personal conversations rather than apart from them.
That is important because the things that shape a society rarely exist in isolation. Politics affects culture. Technology affects journalism. Food is connected to migration. Literature reflects anxieties about the future. Personal stories can become part of national conversations.
The final event in the current programme takes an even larger step inward.
On Wednesday 4 November at 7pm, Michael Pollan appears in the Concert Hall for Michael Pollan's Journey into Consciousness with Sarah Kanowski. The 90-minute conversation draws on neuroscience, philosophy, meditation, psychedelics and theoretical physics as Pollan considers one of science's enduring mysteries: where consciousness comes from.
It is an appropriately open-ended question for a series called Curious.
A Different Way To Spend Time At The Opera House
There is something appealing about experiencing the Opera House without a performance that demands a grand emotional climax.
A Curious event can be quieter.
The audience arrives, finds a seat and settles into the familiar architecture of the theatre. Outside, the harbour continues its own rhythm. Boats cross the water. Tourists photograph the sails. Office workers make their way through Circular Quay. Somewhere beyond the glass, the city carries on.
Inside, the pace slows.
For an hour, the focus is on listening.
That distinction gives the series its own character. It does not require audiences to agree with every idea presented. Nor does it promise that a complicated subject will become simple by the end of the session. Instead, the value lies in giving difficult questions some uninterrupted space.
In a city where most days are structured around movement, that can be surprisingly rare.
Planning A Visit To Curious
The 2026 Curious programme is presented at the Sydney Opera House, Bennelong Point, Sydney NSW 2000. The main October programme takes place on Sunday 4 October, with sessions throughout the day, while Michael Pollan's Journey into Consciousness takes place on Wednesday 4 November at 7pm in the Concert Hall.
The 4 October programme includes sessions beginning in the late morning and continuing through the afternoon and evening, with individual events generally running for around 60 minutes. Michael Pollan's November event runs for approximately 90 minutes.
The Opera House is accessible, with accessible seating available and assistance available through the Box Office.
For the complete programme, current session times, ticket information and event details, visit the official Sydney Opera House Curious programme.
Leaving With More Questions
The best conversations rarely end when the lights come up.
There is usually a moment afterwards when an idea follows you outside. Perhaps it is something about memory and family. Perhaps it is a question about democracy or technology. Perhaps it is simply the thought that a meal can contain an entire sense of place.
At the Opera House, those thoughts have a particularly beautiful setting in which to linger.
The harbour is still moving when the audience steps outside. The sails are still white against the sky. Ferries continue across the water, and Sydney carries on around Bennelong Point with its usual mixture of noise, light and movement.
Curious asks audiences to pause within that movement.
Not necessarily to find answers, but to make room for better questions.
And sometimes, in a city that rarely stops talking, that is reason enough to listen.