The Australian Native Food Festival is set to return to Carriageworks in Sydney's inner west on Saturday, September 26 and Sunday, September 27, with a headline lineup that includes chef and author Mindy Woods, celebrated Sydney cook Kylie Kwong, The Cook Up host Adam Liaw, and Gamilaroi Elder Aunty Beryl Van Oploo OAM — promising a bigger, bolder showcase of Indigenous food, culture and knowledge than its debut edition delivered.
The festival is the creation of Sharon Winsor, a Weilwan woman and founder of native food business Indigiearth, who launched the event last year to give Aboriginal-owned businesses — particularly those run by women in remote communities — a major platform in Sydney. The response caught even her off guard.
"We were expecting four to five thousand people, and then around 10,000 showed up," Winsor said. "We had some Aboriginal businesses selling out of their products on the first day, and then doing a 700-kilometre round trip to restock for day two."
Now, with a larger native food market, an expanded program and a high-profile chef lineup confirmed, Winsor is preparing for a crowd that could surpass even that.
A star-studded program of cooking, culture and storytelling
The cooking demonstration program brings together some of Australia's most respected voices in Indigenous and native-ingredient cuisine. Mindy Woods, a Bundjalung woman and chef-owner of Karkalla on Country, will lead a session focused on native grains alongside Bunurong, Tasmania and Yuin man Uncle Bruce Pascoe. Woods will also sell her native curry powder and macadamia butter — products she grows, harvests and makes on Bundjalung Country in northern NSW and southern Queensland.
One of the festival's most anticipated sessions will see Kylie Kwong take to the stage with her longtime friend and mentor, Aunty Beryl Van Oploo, for a conversation exploring family, food and friendship. The pair will prepare dishes from Aunty Beryl's Cookbook, including stir-fried kangaroo with warrigal greens.
Kwong, who returns for her second year at the festival, has been incorporating native ingredients into her cooking for well over a decade — long before the ingredients gained mainstream recognition. She was adding wallaby to san choy bow, filling dumplings with warrigal greens and frying saltbush cakes years before such dishes became fashionable.
"When I first began using native ingredients 16 years ago, they were not widely understood or used in mainstream kitchens," Kwong said. "Now there is a growing awareness and appreciation of them. But more importantly, a stronger emphasis on cultural respect, proper acknowledgement and supporting Indigenous growers and knowledge holders."
Rounding out the demonstration lineup are Rayleen Brown, founder of Kungkas Can Cook; Adam Liaw, Good Food recipe writer and host of The Cook Up; 2024 MasterChef Australia winner Nat Thaipun; and chef and television personality Colin Fassnidge. Brown will also team up with Karima-Chloé Hazim from Sunday Kitchen for a dedicated cooking class.
Winsor herself was recently recognised with the 2026 Good Food Guide's Bill Granger Trailblazer Award, an honour that underscores the growing national profile of both her business and the festival she built from the ground up.
A free market featuring 32 Indigenous businesses from across the country
At the heart of the festival is its native food market, which is free to enter and will feature 32 Indigenous-owned businesses drawn from "Cape York to the Kimberley and everywhere in between." Visitors can browse and buy native spices, wild tea, bush jerky, chocolates, native plants and a wide range of other products.
For many of the participating businesses, the festival represents a rare opportunity to connect directly with a large metropolitan audience and share the stories behind their products.
"All the businesses are so happy to engage with people and share knowledge and stories of who they are and where they came from," Winsor said.
Those looking for a more hands-on experience can book into ticketed activities, including a basket weaving workshop presented by Ngumpie Weaving and a healing session led by Ngangkari healers.
The festival also connects to a broader conversation about the place of native ingredients in Australian food culture — a subject explored in depth by Australian growers of ancient native superfoods, who continue to push for wider recognition and regulatory support for ingredients long used by First Nations communities.
A platform for Indigenous women — and an open invitation to all
While the festival celebrates Indigenous food and culture, Winsor is emphatic that it is open and welcoming to everyone.
At its core, she says, the event was created to correct an imbalance she had observed in the native food industry — one where the women doing the hardest and most essential work were too often overlooked.
"So many of the women who live, work and breathe native foods are overlooked in the native food space," Winsor said. "That's one of the reasons why I created this festival, to give women in remote areas a presence and platform in Sydney."
With last year's crowd nearly double initial expectations, and a significantly expanded program confirmed for 2026, the Australian Native Food Festival at Carriageworks looks set to cement itself as a fixture on Sydney's cultural calendar — and a vital showcase for the depth, diversity and continued evolution of Indigenous food traditions across the country.
