The Works announces major Sydney summer program: Armand Van Helden headlines New Year's Eve, Overmono and KI/KI are coming
Sydney electronic music series The Works unveiled its program for the Australian summer of 2026/2027 on 8 September, returning to the industrial spaces of Carriageworks in the Eveleigh district. According to the announcement by promoter Finely Tuned and reports published after the program was presented, the new season will comprise six major warehouse events from the beginning of December 2026 to 9 January 2027. The most prominent date is reserved for New Year's Eve, when the program will be headlined by American house veteran Armand Van Helden, joined by confirmed acts Ewan McVicar and salute in a joint back-to-back performance, as well as Canadian producer and DJ Jayda G. In January, British duo Overmono and Dutch DJ and producer KI/KI will also perform at Carriageworks, two names that in recent years have had a particularly visible role on the international club and festival scene. The program additionally includes Rossi., Dean Turnley, Jamback, Stacie Fields, Sam Alfred and Job Jobse, while the previously announced all-night performance by Belgian producer Pegassi on 5 December has already sold out.
The announcement confirms that The Works continues to build a format that is not conceived as a classic multi-day festival at a single location, but as a series of separate evenings in the same venue, with different musical focuses and headlining artists. Organizer Finely Tuned describes the project as a series of large warehouse events combining international artists, powerful production and the raw industrial architecture of Carriageworks. Such a concept allows individual evenings to be shaped around very different areas of electronic music, from house and disco to techno, trance, breakbeat and contemporary British bass sounds. In practice, this means that the audience attending the New Year's Eve program will not necessarily receive the same type of musical experience as visitors to Overmono's performance or the closing night with KI/KI. It is precisely this breadth of programming that is one of the main characteristics of the project's second season.
New Year's Eve with Armand Van Helden, Ewan McVicar, salute and Jayda G
The central date of the new season will be 31 December 2026, when The Works will organize a New Year's Eve event at Carriageworks with Armand Van Helden at the top of the bill. Van Helden is one of the more recognizable American producers who, during the 1990s and 2000s, connected New York house, club pop and crossover production. His single "You Don't Know Me" reached number one on the UK singles chart in February 1999, according to data from the Official Charts Company, while his later work also includes the Duck Sauce project with A-Trak. For The Works, his name brings a clear connection with several generations of club audiences: from listeners who followed his rise in the late 1990s to audiences who know him through more recent festival and DJ performances. The organizers have positioned him as the headliner for New Year's Eve, in a slot that should culminate with the countdown to 2027 in one of Sydney's best-known industrial cultural spaces.
Alongside Van Helden, the New Year's Eve program brings a joint performance by Scottish DJ and producer Ewan McVicar and producer salute. Resident Advisor states that McVicar developed out of the local club scene in Ayr and gained wider attention with the single "Tell Me Something Good", which received recognition from DJ Mag and BBC Radio 1 in electronic music categories in 2021. salute, meanwhile, has built an international audience in recent years through a combination of house, garage and euphoric dance production, and his joint set with McVicar has been announced as back-to-back, which involves the two DJs taking turns at the same booth. The fourth major name of the night is Jayda G, a producer and DJ whose single "Both of Us" was nominated for a Grammy in the Best Dance Recording category at the 63rd awards ceremony in 2021, as confirmed by the Recording Academy. In this way, the New Year's Eve line-up combines house heritage, newer British club production and disco-house sensibility in a program conceived as one of the most important nights of the season.
Overmono arrives following the new album "Pure Devotion"
One of the most anticipated individual dates will be 8 January 2027, when Overmono is scheduled to perform. The Welsh duo consists of brothers Tom and Ed Russell, and their sound combines breakbeat, techno, UK bass, rave and emotionally processed vocal fragments in a format that works equally well on albums and in large concert venues. The Sydney performance comes several months after their second studio album "Pure Devotion", released by XL Recordings on 7 August 2026. The label describes the album as a continuation of the development of their live sound, based on powerful rhythms, bass and more melodic, atmospheric layers. Also important for The Works audience is the fact that Overmono are not coming merely as a DJ project: their international rise has been largely associated with an audio-visual live format designed for large halls and festival stages.
The Sydney date is part of the duo's wider Australian summer tour. According to the schedule published on 8 September, Overmono will perform at the Lost Paradise, Beyond The Valley and Wildlands festivals in late December and early January, arriving at Carriageworks on 8 January before another standalone performance in Melbourne. Such a schedule shows that their appearance at The Works is not an isolated Australian episode, but part of a broader return to a market where they held sold-out standalone concerts in 2024. In the meantime, the scope of their career has expanded further through major UK performances and a new recording phase. For The Works, this means that Overmono appears at a moment when they are presenting current material, rather than merely a retrospective of earlier club hits such as "So U Kno" and tracks from their debut album "Good Lies".
KI/KI closes the announced series on 9 January
The day after Overmono, on 9 January, KI/KI will take over the program according to the published schedule. The Dutch DJ and producer developed out of Amsterdam's underground scene, and her current sound draws on acid, techno, trance and rave aesthetics. In its official biography, Armada Music states that she began in 2018 as a resident of the queer club platform Spielraum, after which performances followed at clubs and festivals such as Berghain, Bassiani and Awakenings. In the past few years, she has become one of the names associated with a new wave of faster, euphoric trance and techno that reconnects the sound of the late 1990s and early 2000s with contemporary festival production. Her position on the closing date of The Works therefore gives the program a different ending from the house-oriented New Year's Eve event or Overmono's hybrid live sound.
For international audiences, KI/KI is also recognizable for releases such as "5 Mins of Acid" and "Leave It to the Vibe", as well as her own event series "KI/KI invites". Her performance at Carriageworks fits into the wider Australian summer season in which some of the artists from The Works program will also appear at other major festivals. Such overlap is not unusual: late December and early January are traditionally a period of intensive festival touring in Australia, so international artists often connect several cities and festivals into a single tour. Nevertheless, The Works format allows for longer and more focused evenings than a typical festival schedule with a large number of simultaneous performers. In the case of KI/KI, the closing night therefore functions as a standalone warehouse event in which the headlining artist is at the center of the entire program.
From Pegassi to Sam Alfred and Job Jobse: the full schedule
The season begins on 5 December with a performance by Pegassi, which was announced before the rest of the program and, according to the announcement, has already sold out. The Belgian producer performs in an "all night long" format, meaning an extended set lasting practically the entire evening. After the New Year's Eve event comes a block of four consecutive January dates. Rossi. will headline the evening on 6 January, for which Dean Turnley b2b Jamback and Stacie Fields have also been announced. A five-hour open-to-close back-to-back set by Sam Alfred and Job Jobse is planned for 7 January, a format in which the same combination of artists guides the musical flow from the opening to the end of the event. Overmono then performs on 8 January, while KI/KI closes the currently announced series on 9 January.
- 5 December 2026 - Pegassi, all night long - sold out
- 31 December 2026 - Armand Van Helden; Ewan McVicar b2b salute; Jayda G
- 6 January 2027 - Rossi.; Dean Turnley b2b Jamback; Stacie Fields
- 7 January 2027 - Sam Alfred b2b Job Jobse, open to close
- 8 January 2027 - Overmono
- 9 January 2027 - KI/KI
The schedule reveals that the organizers are deliberately alternating evenings with multiple artists and those built around one main name or an extended set. Rossi., Dean Turnley, Jamback and Stacie Fields represent a more contemporary house and minimal-house direction, while the combination of Sam Alfred and Job Jobse places the emphasis on DJ selection and the development of the evening over several hours. Such dramaturgy distinguishes the series from a line-up in which performances follow one another in short festival slots. For visitors, this also means a simpler choice: each date has a clearly defined musical identity, so tickets are purchased for an individual evening rather than for an entire multi-day package. The organizer states on the official website that tickets are sold through Carriageworks, with separate information for each event.
Carriageworks as a natural backdrop for the warehouse format
An important part of The Works' identity is not only the program but also the venue. Carriageworks is located at 245 Wilson Street in Eveleigh, in Sydney's broader central area, and is housed in the former Eveleigh Railway Workshops. According to the institution's official history, the complex was built between 1880 and 1889 for the railway industry, and by the beginning of the 20th century several thousand people worked there building and maintaining locomotives and carriages. The space was converted into a cultural complex in 2007 and today hosts contemporary art, theatre, dance, music, fairs and major events. The tall industrial volumes, steel, brick and traces of former factory infrastructure give the venue a visual character that fits directly into the aesthetic of large warehouse parties.
Carriageworks is not merely a concert hall, but one of Australia's more significant multidisciplinary cultural institutions. In its own program, it lists areas including music, performing arts, contemporary art, food, creative markets and major events, while its location on Gadigal land also carries important historical context. The former railway workshops were connected with Sydney's industrial development and labour history; it was precisely in this complex that the major strike of railway and tram workers in New South Wales began in 1917. Today, that industrial layer of the space is used in an entirely different way, but remains visible in the architecture. For The Works, this creates a more authentic backdrop than a conventional arena because the building itself becomes part of the visual and acoustic identity of the event.
Second season following last year's debut
The Works was launched at Carriageworks in 2025, with its first season taking place during the transition into 2026. According to information from the organizers and Carriageworks, that cycle was also conceived as six major music events in the institution's industrial spaces. Artists included Underworld, Ben Böhmer, Chris Stussy, CamelPhat, I Hate Models, Michael Bibi, Ross From Friends and Pretty Girl, which already in the first season demonstrated the organizers' intention not to restrict the series to only one subgenre of electronic music. The project's return for the 2026/2027 season confirms that Finely Tuned and Carriageworks want to make it a recurring part of Sydney's summer music calendar rather than a one-off experiment. The new line-up similarly relies on a combination of established veterans and artists who are currently experiencing strong international expansion.
Finely Tuned, an agency founded in 2006, states in its own materials that it operates in the fields of music events, tours and festivals and is also behind the Lost Paradise festival. The connection between The Works and other major Australian summer events is also visible in the overlap of artists: Armand Van Helden, Overmono, KI/KI, Ewan McVicar, Jayda G, salute, Sam Alfred and others will also appear on parts of the festival program in late December. For international artists, such a network of dates makes it easier to organize Australian tours, while The Works gains an opportunity to offer more specific indoor or warehouse performances outside the classic festival environment. Given that Pegassi's night has already sold out before the announcement of the rest of the season, interest in the series clearly exists even before the beginning of the main sales phase for the other dates.
The program announced on 8 September thus places Carriageworks at the center of one of Sydney's denser electronic music series during the transition from 2026 into 2027. Armand Van Helden's New Year's Eve performance gives the program a recognizable historical name from house music, while Overmono and KI/KI represent two different current currents of the European club scene. Between them is a range of artists covering house, garage, trance, techno and contemporary festival electronica, with formats ranging from classic multi-artist line-ups to all-night and open-to-close sets. It is precisely this range, together with the industrial character of Carriageworks, that makes the new season of The Works more than a series of unrelated guest appearances. If the announced schedule remains unchanged, Sydney will receive six separate major events in just over a month, presenting electronic music through several generations and stylistic directions.
Sources:
- The Works / Finely Tuned - official information about the series concept, organizer, venue and ticket sales (link)
- Rolling Stone Australia - announcement of The Works program for the 2026/2027 season, dates and confirmed artists (link)
- Carriageworks - official information about the history, purpose and location of the cultural complex in Eveleigh (link)
- XL Recordings - information about Overmono's album "Pure Devotion" and its release date of 7 August 2026 (link)
- Recording Academy / Grammy - confirmation of Jayda G's nomination for "Both of Us" at the 2021 Grammy Awards (link)
- Official Charts Company - chart history of Armand Van Helden's single "You Don't Know Me" and its number-one position on the UK chart in 1999 (link)
- Armada Music - official KI/KI biography and information about her development from Amsterdam's club scene (link)
- Resident Advisor - biographical information about Ewan McVicar, his career and previous recognition (link)