Roger Sanchez is part of the Ministry of Sound Summer Dance Festival line-up heading to HOTA Parklands on the Gold Coast. Photo: Roger Sanchez/Facebook.
Ministry of Sound will bring its Summer Dance Festival to the Gold Coast in December, led by CLASSICAL from the Ministry of Sound Orchestra and a DJ line-up headed by US house heavyweight Roger Sanchez.
The festival lands at HOTA on Friday, December 4, giving Queensland the first date on the national run before the event heads to Sydney, Perth and Melbourne.
For the Gold Coast, the announcement is a decent summer flex. The 2026 event is being billed as Ministry of Sound’s biggest ever Gold Coast show, with three stages, an expanded festival footprint and a mix of orchestral dance nostalgia, international DJs and homegrown club names.
CLASSICAL leads the Gold Coast line-up
At the centre of the festival is CLASSICAL, performed by The Ministry of Sound Orchestra with DJ Groove Terminator.
The live show reworks dance anthems with orchestral arrangements, bringing club tracks into a bigger open-air format built for people who remember the original dancefloor era and people who have only discovered it through suspiciously emotional festival singalongs.
The Gold Coast bill also features Roger Sanchez, Seb Fontaine, Braxe + Falcon, Utah Saints, K-Klass, DJ Paulette, John Course, Minx, Sgt Slick and more, with local line-ups also promised in each city.
A bigger HOTA dance festival
Ministry of Sound Summer Dance Festival will take over both the HOTA Outdoor Stage and HOTA Parklands, with the event expanding into a three-stage format backed by food trucks, outdoor bars and beer garden energy.
It gives the Gold Coast another major open-air music event on the summer calendar, landing somewhere between dance festival, nostalgia machine and big parkland party.
The Queensland event is 18+ and runs from 4pm to 10pm.
Ministry of Sound Summer Dance Festival 2026 dates
- Friday, December 4 — HOTA Parklands, Gold Coast
- Saturday, December 5 — The Domain, Sydney
- Friday, December 11 — Kings Park & Botanic Garden, Perth
- Saturday, December 12 — Sidney Myer Music Bowl, Melbourne
- Sunday, December 13 — Kings Park & Botanic Garden, Perth
Pre-sale begins on Tuesday, June 2, with general public tickets on sale from Wednesday, June 3.
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