The Adelaide Festival has announced that its 2018 Festival has already broken its box office record with two days still to go, recording box office income in excess of $4.5 million. The Adelaide Fringe Festival has also announced a bumper year, with ticket sales up 7.6% compared with last year and more than 700,000 tickets sold.

The Adelaide Festival, which kicked off its opening weekend with Brett Dean’s opera Hamlet, and has featured events such as Ivo van Hove’s Kings of War, The Balanescu Quartet Retrospective, Human Requiem and Belgian play Us/Them, saw a box office up by 10.3% on the previous record of $4.08 million, which was set by Artistic Directors Rachel Healy and Neil Armfield AO at their first Festival in 2017. (The $4.5 million box office income does not include WOMADelaide.) Total attendances were also up, with more than 353,954 attendees across all Adelaide Festival events, including WOMADelaide, a 24% increase on last year’s numbers.

“The 2018 Adelaide Festival has been so rewarding to develop and deliver to audiences and we continue to be buoyed by the joyous response we have received from local audiences as well as our interstate and international...