Laneway Festival Director Jessie Parker to Step Down After 16 Years

Jessie Parker, the festival director of Australia and New Zealand’s Laneway Festival, is stepping down after 16 years with the touring event, she announced this week.

Parker shared the news in a LinkedIn post on Monday (Aug. 17), saying she will leave the role at the end of the month. “After 16 years with Laneway Festival, and six incredible years at the helm as General Manager / Festival Director, it is time for me to wrap up this chapter and step down at the end of this month,” she wrote.

Parker joined Laneway as an event assistant and rose through the organization over the following decade to become general manager and, in May 2025, festival director for Australia and New Zealand — one of the highest-ranking female executives in the country’s live-music industry.

“Reflecting on where it all started as an event assistant, I never could have imagined the wild, rewarding journey ahead,” she wrote. “To go from managing resident comms and running accred around the site, to leading six simultaneous touring events across Australia and New Zealand has been the privilege of a lifetime.”

Her departure caps a high point for the festival. Laneway’s 2025 run was its most successful, drawing 200,000 attendees across sold-out shows in Auckland, Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide and Perth, with a bill led by Charli XCX, Clairo, BICEP and Olivia Dean. The festival went on to win the inaugural ARIA Award for Best Festival and was named Music Event of the Year in New Zealand.

Parker pointed to the industry work behind the scenes as her proudest contribution, citing her roles on the Australian Festivals Association board and the NSW Music Festivals Roundtable “during a transformative era for live music.”

Parker did not detail her next move, saying only that she is “excited for what comes next and fully open to new opportunities.” She did not announce a successor, and Laneway — part of the TEG group, with co-founders Danny Rogers and Jerome Borazio — has not yet named a replacement.

The exit comes at a pivotal moment for the festival. Laneway returns to Australia and New Zealand in 2027, but announced last week that it will not visit Adelaide or Perth next year, scaling back to Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne and Auckland, with venues, dates and lineup still to come.

The pullback lands amid a turbulent stretch for Australia’s festival sector, which has seen a wave of cancellations and closures in recent years. Laneway marked its 21st year in 2026 with a lineup headlined by Chappell Roan, alongside Wet Leg, Wolf Alice, PinkPantheress, Geese and Lucy Dacus.