2026 NAIDOC Week
NAIDOC Week is celebrated from 5–12 July this year.
National NAIDOC Week celebrates the history, culture, and achievements of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, and is an opportunity to learn about Indigenous cultures and histories and participate in celebrating the oldest, continuous living cultures on earth.
For five decades, NAIDOC Week has celebrated the voices of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities — steady, unapologetic, and proud. Each year, its themes have called for truth, celebrated culture, honoured resistance and reminded the nation of who the First Peoples of this country are.
The 2026 NAIDOC Week theme — Fifty Years of Deadly — is a tribute to the people who built this movement, the Elders who stood firm, the organisers who made space, the artists who turned resistance into expression, and the communities who keep showing up, year after year.
NAIDOC has always been more than a week — it’s a platform, a protest, a celebration, and a statement of survival.
This moment is about looking back at the stories, the marches, the languages, the art, the leadership. At the strength it took to get here. And it’s about the future. The next 50 years. The young ones growing up proud. The return of language. The return to Country. The fight for justice continuing with new tools, new voices, and the same fire.
Fifty Years of Deadly is proof of what’s possible when culture leads and community comes first.
NAIDOC Week at UniMelb 2026
Events and activities
'50 Years of Deadly' NAIDOC Week morning tea, Friday 10 July
Students and Staff in the University community are invited to join us for morning tea, then walk together to the NAIDOC March to celebrate culture, community and connection. This is a chance to come together in community, reflect on the week and celebrate this year’s theme, “50 Years of Deadly,” before joining the march. More information
Join the NAIDOC March, Friday 10 July
The annual Narrm NAIDOC March will take place again this year. The march is expected to depart at 12 noon from the Victorian Aboriginal Health Service (VAHS) in Nicholson Street, Fitzroy. All members of the University of Melbourne community are welcome to join the NAIDOC march.
Ngarn Wa'ngal: Art of the gum tree
Visit the Potter Museum of Art from Friday 10 July for Ngarn Wa'ngal: Art of the gum tree.
A defining feature of the Australian landscape, the gum tree breathes through our collective imagination, connecting us to this land and shaping our personal and cultural identities.
In Ngarn Wa'ngal: Art of the gumtree, we invite you to explore this iconic tree as a source of creative inspiration branching across centuries of artistic practice.
Translating as 'breathing for us' in Woi Wurrung, Ngarn Wa'ngal celebrates the deep cultural and ecological significance of the eucalypt. Over three floors, this expansive exhibition brings together colonial, twentieth century and contemporary works, sparking broader conversations about identity, sovereignty, climate and continuity.
Drawing from the University of Melbourne's collections alongside significant local and interstate loans, Ngarn Wa'ngal features over 160 works including commissions by Jane E. Brown, Dean Cross, megan evans, Janet Laurence and Jazz Money.
Curated by Alisa Bunbury, Senior Curator of the Grimwade Collection at the University of Melbourne, and Guest Curator Sophie Gerhard.
Explore Billibellary’s Walk
Billibellary’s Walk, is a cultural interpretation of the University’s Parkville campus landscape. It is self-guided and provides a narrative, from an Aboriginal perspective, for participants to explore and imagine the university landscape across time and seasons whilst considering the social and cultural constructions of ‘place’. The Walk is named after the Ngurungaeta, or clan head, of the Wurundjeri people at the time of Melbourne’s settlement. Download the app or the map.
50 Years of Deadly – 2026 NAIDOC booklist
Titles inspired by this year’s theme, available for loan from the University of Melbourne Library. Includes print copies from the Australian Indigenous Knowledges collection, ebooks, and videos of stories being read aloud from Storybox library. Created by the Education liaison librarians at the Giblin Eunson Library. Explore the list
About the 2026 NAIDOC Artwork
Poster title: Paralpi
Artist: Zaachariaha Fielding
Zaachariaha Fielding is a proud Yankunytjatjara man from the APY Lands in South Australia and is widely recognised as one of the country’s leading contemporary First Nations artists and musicians. Known internationally through the acclaimed music duo Electric Fields, his work brings together language, sound, visual storytelling and culture in deeply powerful and contemporary ways.
Paralpi reflects movement, energy and continuity, carrying the stories of Ancestors forward while celebrating the creativity and cultural power of the next generation. Rich in colour and symbolism, the artwork speaks to the enduring strength of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples over the past 50 years of NAIDOC and beyond.
Through this work, Zaachariaha honours the resilience of community, the importance of language and identity, and the ongoing cultural renaissance being led by First Nations peoples across the country and across the APY Lands.