Sculpture by the Sea, Bondi 2026 – Thirty Years of Art on the Bondi to Tamarama Walk

Every spring, usually around late October, the clifftop walk from Bondi to Tamarama fills up with art. There are steel giants on the headland at Marks Park, odd shapes wedged among the sandstone, and a few pieces sitting on the sand at Tamarama. Then you look up from a sculpture and there's the Pacific behind it. Sculpture by the Sea calls itself the world's largest free-to-the-public outdoor sculpture exhibition. In 2026 it is turning 30.

If you want the story of the beach itself, from Boondi and the O'Brien Estate to Black Sunday, I've written it up in Bondi Beach and its history.

Bondi 2026: the basics

The 2026 exhibition runs from Friday 16 October to Monday 2 November 2026, 18 days in all, along the two-kilometre coastal walk from Bondi to Tamarama. The NSW Government's events listing says it is free. The official visitor site says the Sculpture Inside exhibition at Marks Park is open daily from 10am to 6pm.

The organisers say there are 100 sculptures by artists from 14 countries, including Japan, India, China, New Zealand, Slovakia and South Africa, and that 30 of the artists are showing at Bondi for the first time. They expected more than 450,000 visitors. The NSW Government listing gives the usual crowd as "over 500,000" across the 18 days. (The same listing also calls 2026 the "21st anniversary", which looks like leftover text, because the organisers' own announcement says 30th.)

A Richard Tipping sign on the coastal walk, photographed at Sculpture by the Sea, Bondi 2025. JustARandomEditor123, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).

The big prize: Harrie Fasher

The main award is the $70,000 Aqualand Sculpture Award, which the organisers call the most generous annual sculpture award in Australia. It was announced on opening day, 16 October. It went to Harrie Fasher of Portland, NSW, for Unveiling the Edges of the Sky, a handmade steel and bronze sculpture, part figurative and part abstract, standing 6 metres tall and 5 metres long. It is her sixth time at Bondi. She has already won the major award at the Cottesloe show in Perth. The award is acquisitive, so Aqualand will gift the work for permanent public display in NSW.

Fasher dedicated the prize "to the women of this world – to the artists, the women who work tirelessly to bring this show to life and women who continue to keep the world turning." The judges were Dr Michael Hill of the National Art School, the artist Dale Miles, and Denise Mimmocchi, senior curator of Australian art at the Art Gallery of NSW.

I couldn't find a free-licence photo of the 2026 winner, so you'll have to go and see it. The organisers' own photos of the 2026 works are on their website.

The other awards and grants

• Helen Lempriere Scholarships ($90,000 in total): Anne Neil (WA), James Tapscott (Vic) and Elyssa Sykes-Smith (NSW).
• Transfield Australian Invited Artist Program ($35,000, $17,500 each): Harrie Fasher of Portland and James Rogers of Walcha. Rogers won the main Aqualand award in 2025 with Siren's Song.
• Clitheroe Foundation Emerging Sculptor Mentor Program ($30,000): Nate Don (NSW) and Joe Liu (NSW/China).
• Waverley Council Mayor's Award ($10,000): David Norton.
• NRMA Insurance Indigenous Artist Program ($20,000, new this year): David Doyle, a Barkindji and Malyangapa artist from Broken Hill. His Kaaku-Kaakulinya: Eternal Sentinels is two shield forms in cast iron and steel, set on Tamarama beach looking out to sea.
• NRMA Insurance Artist Subsidies ($5,000 each): Matt Calvert (Tas), Koichi Ishino (NSW/Japan), Sonia Payes (Vic) and Lu Yuanliang (China).
• Allens Invited Artist Program (new this year): Dominique Sutton, for her monumental work Pegasus.

The People's Choice award is decided by visitor votes on the official site, and had not been announced when I wrote this.

Names to look out for

A few of the familiar names are back. The Japanese sculptor Keizo Ushio is marking his 50th Sculpture by the Sea across Bondi, Cottesloe and the old Denmark show. Koichi Ishino reaches his 20th Bondi exhibition. Tim Storrier, the Archibald Prize winner, is back for a second year after winning last year's People's Choice. His 2026 piece is called Wayfarer. China's Chen Wenling is in the show too. The official site also features Emma Anna's DREAM_N, Nenad Milovanović's Support IV from Serbia, and Andre Braun's Surface Breach.

Oushi Zokei – Flight by Keizo Ushio, who is marking his 50th Sculpture by the Sea in 2026. Photographed at Sculpture by the Sea, Bondi 2025. JustARandomEditor123, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).

Splotcher by Tim Storrier, winner of the 2025 People's Choice award. Photographed at Sculpture by the Sea, Bondi 2025. JustARandomEditor123, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).

Tower by Barbara Licha, who is in the 2026 artist list as well. Photographed at Sculpture by the Sea, Bondi 2025. JustARandomEditor123, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).

Love, written in the sky

One work isn't on the ground at all. Stephanie Quirk's Love is written in the sky above Bondi by a skywriter four times during the show: at the launch and on each of the three Saturdays, weather permitting. The organisers say it is their response "in particular to the tragedy of the Bondi massacre on 14 December last year", the Hanukkah shooting near Archer Park in which 15 people were killed. Quirk says, "We are all under this sky together, this is our state of belonging."

Walking it

The walk starts at the south end of Bondi, near the Icebergs. It winds around the cliffs at Mackenzies Point, climbs up to the grassy headland of Marks Park, where most of the big pieces sit, and drops down to Tamarama beach. It's two kilometres, with plenty of steps and plenty of people, so go early on a weekday if you can. The Icebergs pool gets a mention in my Bondi history page.

Marks Park, Tamarama, during Sculpture by the Sea 2011. John Gillmore, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 3.0).

Tamarama beach in 2010, with Tae-Guen Yang's hen sculpture. emmett anderson, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0).

How it started: a lounge room and $100

The man behind it is David Handley, still the founding CEO and artistic director. In the history on the organisers' site, Handley writes that the idea came from a night in the early 1990s, while he was living in Prague. Czech art school friends took him to an outdoor sculpture park set among 13th-century ruins near Klatovy, in Bohemia. When he came back to Sydney in 1996, friends told him to walk the Bondi to Tamarama track. He saw "natural plinth after natural plinth".

At first it was going to be "Art by the Sea". Handley says he dropped the paintings within a day, because wind and rain on the clifftop would make them "an absolute liability". Anita Johnston at Waverley Council steered the show through approvals, and the sculptor Ron Robertson-Swann advised on placing work outdoors. The show was run from Handley's lounge room by volunteers and started with $100 in the bank. Sydney Water put up $5,000 for the first prize.

The first exhibition, in May 1997, was put together in ten weeks. The education kit on the organisers' site says 63 sculptures were installed, shown and taken down in a single day. Handley says it had to be one day because there was no money for security. It drew 25,000 visitors, and Waverley Council allowed a multi-day show in 1998.

Haven by Ron Robertson-Swann, the sculptor who helped Handley get the first show off the ground. Photographed at Sculpture by the Sea, Bondi 2025. JustARandomEditor123, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).

Growing up

In 1998 the Sydney Olympic organisers commissioned five Sculpture by the Sea exhibitions for the Olympic Arts Festival: at Darwin, Noosa, Albany, Bondi and the Tasman Peninsula, with more than 260 sculptures between them. Those interstate shows didn't survive once the Olympic money ran out. A sister exhibition at Cottesloe Beach in Perth began in 2005. Its next show runs from 5 to 22 March 2027. The school education program began at Bondi in 2004, and the organisers say more than 42,500 students have taken part since.

The Aqualand award's recent winners give you a feel for the show. They were Johannes Pannekoek (2016), David Ball (2017), James Parrett (2018), Morgan Jones of New Zealand (2019), Tony Davis (2022), John Petrie (2023), Shen Lieyi of China (2024) and James Rogers (2025).

Crowds on the coastal walk during Sculpture by the Sea, Bondi 2017. Ashishlohorung, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).

Sculpture by the Sea, Bondi 2019. MDRX, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).

Sculpture by the Sea, Bondi 2019. MDRX, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).

Sculpture by the Sea, Bondi 2019. MDRX, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).

The COVID gap

Then the pandemic hit. In March 2020 the Cottesloe show closed early, when community transmission began in Perth. The Bondi show was postponed. The Sydney Morning Herald reported that it failed to get a NSW Health exemption in 2020, and that in September 2021 it was cancelled for a second year. Handley said the only way to limit the crowd to vaccinated people would have been to fence off the coastal walk, and that "it's not something we or our stakeholders would want to consider." Bondi came back in 2022, which is why there is no 2020 or 2021 Aqualand winner.

A few more from recent years

Indra's Net by Kasane Low. Photographed at Sculpture by the Sea, Bondi 2025. JustARandomEditor123, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).

Vital Threads by Geraldo Zamproni. Photographed at Sculpture by the Sea, Bondi 2025. JustARandomEditor123, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).

Alien Arums by Ghost Net Collective. Photographed at Sculpture by the Sea, Bondi 2025. JustARandomEditor123, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).

Chameleon Lock by Michael Le Grand. Photographed at Sculpture by the Sea, Bondi 2025. JustARandomEditor123, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).

Shrine by Niharika Hukku. Photographed at Sculpture by the Sea, Bondi 2025. JustARandomEditor123, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).

Pandurang by Dr Subodh Kerkar of India. Photographed at Sculpture by the Sea, Bondi 2025. JustARandomEditor123, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).

Settlement by Jens Ingvard Hansen. Photographed at Sculpture by the Sea, Bondi 2025. JustARandomEditor123, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).

Somewhere in Time by Dr Peter Tilley. Photographed at Sculpture by the Sea, Bondi 2025. JustARandomEditor123, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).

Sway by April Pine. Photographed at Sculpture by the Sea, Bondi 2025. JustARandomEditor123, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).

Snowflake by Dr Wayne Z Hudson. Photographed at Sculpture by the Sea, Bondi 2025. JustARandomEditor123, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).

Begrudgement by Ruth Abernethy. Photographed at Sculpture by the Sea, Bondi 2025. JustARandomEditor123, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).

Weave the Reef, Love the Reef by Marion Gaemers, Sculpture by the Sea, Bondi 2016. Tony Hisgett, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0).

Casting Around by Ruth Downes and Geoff Webster, made of mounted fishing rods, 2012. MargaretRDonald, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).

A turtle sculpture on Tamarama beach, 2010. Iain.Davidson100, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0).

It's on until Monday 2 November. If you haven't been yet, catch the bus to Bondi, walk south and keep going until you run out of sculptures.

Where this came from

• Sculpture by the Sea: "Recipient of the $70,000 Aqualand Sculpture Award announced" (16 October 2026); the Aqualand Sculpture Award page; the Bondi page; news listings; "NRMA Insurance returns as a major partner" (23 October 2026); History (David Handley); the Education Kit case study; "COVID-19 update" (19 March 2020).
• Sculpture by the Sea visitor site (visit.sculpturebythesea.com): dates, hours and artist list.
• NSW Government: NSW Events, Sculpture by the Sea.
• Sydney Morning Herald, "Sculpture by the Sea cancelled for second year", Linda Morris, 12 September 2021.
• Photos: Wikimedia Commons, with licences as captioned.