For one weekend in September the beachfront stops being about the surf. Road barriers go up along North and South Steyne, four stages appear between the sand and the shops, and a peninsula that normally empties by nine on a Sunday night fills with double basses.
Manly Jazz has run since 1977, which makes it the oldest continuously running jazz festival in Australia. It is free. It is non-ticketed. Nobody checks a wristband, because there aren't any. Now in its 49th year, it lands on Friday 18 to Sunday 20 September 2026, with more than 95 acts across four outdoor stages and 12+ official venues in and around Manly.
This is the local's version: what the weekend is actually shaped like, which room suits which mood, and the handful of logistics that separate a good Sunday from three hours looking for a park.
Looking for set times? Every act, every stage, hour by hour, is laid out in the Manly Jazz 2026 program and set times. This page is the context; that one is the timetable.
The basics
| Dates | Friday 18 – Sunday 20 September 2026 |
| Price | Free. Non-ticketed, no registration, no wristband |
| Scale | 95+ acts, four outdoor stages, 12+ official venues |
| Where | Manly beachfront, the Corso and the surrounding blocks |
| Music | New Orleans trad through swing, soul, blues, gospel, roots, Latin and funk |
| Road closures | North and South Steyne, Raglan to Wentworth Street, 4pm Friday until 11.59pm Sunday |
| Program | Published online and on signage around the site. There is no printed program — the council dropped it on sustainability grounds |
| Rules | Glass free. BYO food and non-alcoholic drinks is fine |
The outdoor stages are free to everyone and always have been. The official venues are pubs, bars, a library, a gallery and two churches running their own programmed sets, so entry is almost always free but you're expected to buy a drink, and the good rooms fill. The one paid exception in 2026 is the Manly Art Gallery & Museum double bill on Saturday night, which is ticketed.
Food and drink on site runs through Bucketty's Jazz Garden on the beachfront plus the usual Manly restaurants and the official venues.
The 2026 lineup, in one paragraph
The names most people will recognise are Monica Trapaga, the Hot Potato Band and jazz-fusion outfit Back to Back, returning under trumpeter Ralph Pyl. Beyond those: Sax Summit (four saxes and percussion, the most fun set of the weekend), the 343 Brass Band roving in their purple shirts, vocalist Ruby Jackson, the Beachside Big Band, the Sydney Conservatorium Big Band and the Sydney Youth Jazz Orchestra. The one worth booking rather than drifting into is the Hilary Geddes Quartet with Murmurations at Manly Art Gallery & Museum on Saturday evening.
Where it actually happens
Understand the geography and the rest is easy. Manly's beachfront runs north–south along the Steyne; the Corso is the pedestrian spine running west from the sand to the ferry wharf. The festival occupies both, plus the streets either side.
The road closures on North and South Steyne are the thing to internalise. From 4pm Friday until 11.59pm Sunday, the beachfront road between Raglan and Wentworth Street is shut to traffic and becomes the festival. Surrounding streets get busier in sympathy. That's also why driving in is a bad idea — more on that below.
Everything is walkable. The furthest official venue is a few minutes from the nearest, and the standard way to do the weekend is to drift rather than plan: catch twenty minutes of a set, hear something better down the road, follow it.
The four stages
The council has confirmed four stages for 2026:
- Beachfront stage — the big one, on the closed section of the Steyne with the ocean behind the band. Headline sets, the largest crowd, and the stage people mean when they say "the main stage". Bring something to sit on; the good spots go early on Saturday afternoon.
- Sydney Road stage — smaller, tighter, closer to the pubs. Better acoustics than an open beachfront, and easier to actually see the players.
- Jazz Stars of the Future stage — school and youth ensembles, from the NSW Public Schools Stage Band down to individual high-school big bands. Genuinely worth an hour, and the least crowded stage of the weekend.
- St Matts stage — inside the church precinct on the Corso, running Saturday 10am to just after 6pm across two rooms (the Ellington Room in Pont Hall and the Count Basie Room off the courtyard). Different proposition entirely: seated, quiet, acoustically superb. St Matthews also hosts gospel jazz services on Sunday at 10am and 5.30pm.
Sets on the outdoor stages run in roughly 45-minute blocks from mid-morning to around 6pm, with a fresh act starting on the quarter hour somewhere nearby. Check the day-by-day lineups on the council site before you plan an afternoon around one band.
The full stage-by-stage grid — all four stages across both days, plus every official venue — is set out in the Manly Jazz 2026 program and set times.
The indoor venues, room by room
This is where the festival gets interesting, and where most first-timers never go. More than a dozen official venues run their own programmed sets across the weekend — pubs, wine bars, a library, a gallery and two churches. Here's the 2026 shape.
The big pubs. Hotel Steyne sits at the beach end of the Corso and is the loudest, busiest option — courtyard, rooftop, Beach Club and Miami Rice all running their own bands and DJs from noon each day, jazz through funk and blues. The New Brighton Hotel is on the corner opposite; its Corso Bar has David Weir & The Weird Assembly on Saturday from 6pm, and the balcony is one of the best free seats in Manly. The Ivanhoe is further up the hill, open from noon all three days with piano singalongs, duos and vinyl DJs, and it holds its crowd later than most.
The wharf. Felons Manly Wharf has the water, the space and the brewery, and it is the natural last stop if you're catching a ferry home. It's a five-minute walk from the beachfront stages down the Corso — see the Manly Wharf guide for what else is down there now.
The smaller rooms are where the actual listening happens. InSitu has The Aston Martinis on Saturday from 5.30pm. Donny's Bar runs early acoustic sets all three days alongside happy hour. The Cumberland, the speakeasy, closes the weekend with a jazz trio and vocalist Leah Berry on Sunday 4–7pm, and Cibaria's 55 North on the waterfront finishes with End Notes Collective and half-price cocktails from 4pm. Henry G's Wine Parlour has a pianist every night plus a live accordion set on Saturday afternoon. Fewer people, closer to the band, and you can hear the bass. If you only do one indoor venue, make it one of these rather than a big pub.
The odd ones, which are the best ones. Manly Library runs a free Friday open mic, 5.30–7pm, sign-up from 5pm. Manly Art Gallery & Museum has the weekend's one genuinely special ticket: the Hilary Geddes Quartet with Murmurations, Saturday 5.30–8.30pm, with nibbles and a glass of wine included. And Manly Presbyterian Church holds its Sunday 9.30am jazz gospel service with Geoff Power's New Orleans Jazz Band — free, open to anyone, and a genuinely unusual way to start the last day. These are the sets locals talk about afterwards.
Getting there: take the boat
Come by ferry. This is not a preference, it's the whole answer.
The F1 from Circular Quay runs every twenty to thirty minutes and takes half an hour, and it drops you at the wharf a four-minute walk from the stages. On a festival weekend it's faster than driving, cheaper than parking, and it removes the entire problem of getting home. The local's guide to the ferry covers Opal fares, timetables and which side to sit on.
The B-Line bus runs from the city and down the Northern Beaches from about 4:30am to 12:30am, seven days. It's the right call if you're coming from Dee Why, Mona Vale or Newport rather than the city.
If you must drive, know what you're driving into. The beachfront road is closed. Manly's four paid parking stations show real-time availability on the council website, and on a Saturday afternoon in September they will be full. Add the road closures and you have the worst parking weekend of the year outside summer. Read where to park in Manly first, park well back from the beach, and walk in. Or don't drive.
Eating between sets
Manly's food problem during Jazz is not quality, it's queues. Two rules make the weekend work.
Book anything you actually care about, especially Saturday dinner and especially the waterfront. Tables that sit empty on an ordinary September Tuesday are gone by Wednesday of festival week.
Otherwise, eat off-peak or eat on the move. The Corso and the streets running off it are dense with counter-service options, and a fish and chips on the sand between sets is a better festival lunch than any table. The full guide to eating in Manly has the whole picture; the restaurant directory filters by cuisine and price if you want something specific near a particular stage. The fish and chips guide says which counter to aim for.
One local note: if you want a sit-down dinner with the festival still audible but not on top of you, book something a block back from the Steyne rather than on it.
Where to stay, and when to book
Manly has around seven hotels worth booking and a few hundred apartments. That is a small amount of accommodation for a weekend that draws thousands of people, and September is already the start of the shoulder season climb.
Book now, not in September. Rates on the beachfront roughly double for the festival weekend and the good rooms go months out. Our best hotels in Manly guide ranks the realistic options, and the full directory lists everything.
If it's sold out — and it will be — staying in the city and catching the ferry over each morning is a perfectly good plan B. You get the harbour crossing twice a day, which is not the worst commute.
A plan for each day
Friday. Things start in the evening. Road closures go up at 4pm and the official venues carry the night — this is the pub-crawl day, and the library open mic at 5.30pm is the sleeper pick. Lower crowds than the weekend, and the town has a nice restless quality to it.
Saturday. The big day. Beachfront stage from mid-morning, St Matts for something quieter in the afternoon, the gallery double bill at 5.30pm if you've booked, and the pubs from early evening onward. Get to the main stage before the headline set if you want to sit. Expect the Corso to be genuinely packed between two and six.
Sunday. The best day, and most visitors have gone home. Start with the 9.30am gospel service at Manly Presbyterian, spend the afternoon stage-hopping, then let the late-afternoon venue sets — The Cumberland, 55 North, The Gopher, The Hold, all from around 4pm — carry you to an early-evening ferry with the light going pink over the harbour. The closures lift at midnight, but the crowd thins from about seven.
What to bring
- Something to sit on. A towel or a folding chair. The beachfront stage is standing and sand.
- A jumper. September in Sydney is spring on paper and cold by nine at night, with a sea breeze.
- Cash is optional but useful at the smaller stalls.
- BYO food and soft drinks is allowed and sensible. No glass, though: it's a glass-free event.
- Your phone for the program. There is no printed one, by design.
- Sunscreen. Spring UV in Sydney is stronger than northern-hemisphere visitors expect, even at 20°C.
- Not the car. See above.
A short history
The first Manly Jazz ran in 1977, when the beachfront was a very different place and a free outdoor jazz festival was an odd idea for a surf suburb. It stuck. Now in its 49th year it is the oldest continuously running jazz festival in the country and the largest annual event on the Northern Beaches calendar.
It has stayed free that entire time, which is the part locals are quietly proud of. There is no VIP enclosure and no tiered ticketing. You turn up, you stand on a public street, and you listen.
The short version
18–20 September, free, no tickets. Four stages: Beachfront, Sydney Road, Jazz Stars of the Future and St Matts. Come on the ferry. Saturday is the biggest day and Sunday is the best one. See at least one set in a small room rather than only the beachfront stage. Book a bed and a Saturday dinner table now, not in September. Bring a jumper, leave the glass at home.
For everything else on in Manly this September — the final weeks of the Environmental Art & Design Prize and the patrol flags going back up — see what's on in Manly this September.
The rest of the year's calendar — the Surf Open, Taste of Manly, the Cole Classic and New Year's Eve — is on the festivals and events page.
Photo credits
Every photograph here comes from Wikimedia Commons and is used under a Creative Commons or public domain licence. In order of appearance:
- Opening — Jorgio El Zein (CC BY-SA 4.0)
- Where it happens — Maksym Kozlenko (CC BY-SA 3.0); unknown photographer (public domain); Stefano (CC BY-SA 3.0); Maksym Kozlenko (CC BY-SA 3.0)
- The four stages — Jorgio El Zein (CC BY-SA 4.0) ×2
- The venues — Stefano (CC BY-SA 3.0); grumpylumixuser (CC BY 3.0); Orderinchaos (CC BY-SA 4.0); Sardaka (CC BY-SA 4.0); Blank-2018 (CC BY-SA 4.0)
- Eating between sets — Maksym Kozlenko (CC BY-SA 3.0) ×3
- A short history — William Henry Broadhurst, State Library of NSW (public domain)
