When Sharon Winsor, a Weilwan woman and founder of native food business Indigiearth, launched the Australian Native Food Festival last year, she didn’t expect quite so many people to turn up.

“We were expecting four to five thousand people, and then around 10,000 showed up,” she says. “We had some Aboriginal businesses selling out of their products on the first day, and then doing a 700-kilometre round trip to restock for day two.”

This year, Winsor, who was awarded the 2026 Good Food Guide’s Bill Granger Trailblazer Award, is ready for an even bigger crowd. The festival will return to Carriageworks in Sydney’s inner west on Saturday, September 26 and Sunday, September 27, with a larger native food market and an expanded program of cooking demonstrations, workshops and storytelling, showcasing Indigenous food, culture and knowledge.

The program includes cooking demonstrations from leading Indigenous chefs like Gamilaroi Elder Aunty Beryl Van Oploo OAM, Rayleen Brown, founder of Kungkas Can Cook, and Mindy Woods, chef-owner of Karkalla on Country, alongside chefs with a passion for native food and ingredients, such as Australian-Chinese chef and cookbook author Kylie Kwong, 2024 MasterChef Australia winner Nat Thaipun, Good Food recipe writer and The Cook Up host Adam Liaw and chef and TV personality Colin Fassnidge.

The native food market, which is free to enter, will bring together 32 Indigenous-owned businesses “from Cape York to the Kimberley and everywhere in between”, selling native spices, wild tea, bush jerky, chocolates, native plants and more.

“All the businesses are so happy to engage with people and share knowledge and stories of who they are and where they came from,” says Winsor.

There are activities you can book as well, including a basket weaving workshop presented by Ngumpie Weaving and a hands-on healing session by Ngangkari healers.

Woods, a Bundjalung woman, will present a session on native grains with Bunurong, Tasmania and Yuin man Uncle Bruce Pascoe. She’ll also sell her native curry powder and macadamia butter, which she grows, harvests and makes on Bundjalung Country, in northern NSW and southern Queensland.

Kwong, meanwhile, returns for a second year. Long before native ingredients hit the mainstream, the Sydney chef was adding wallaby to san choy bow, filling dumplings with warrigal greens and frying saltbush cakes.

This year, she will team up with her longtime friend and mentor, Aunty Beryl, for a conversation about family, food and friendship, while preparing dishes from Aunty Beryl’s Cookbook, including stir-fried kangaroo with warrigal greens.

“When I first began using native ingredients 16 years ago, they were not widely understood or used in mainstream kitchens,” says Kwong. “Now there is a growing awareness and appreciation of them. But more importantly, a stronger emphasis on cultural respect, proper acknowledgement and supporting Indigenous growers and knowledge holders.”

For Winsor, the festival is just as much about the people as it is the food, and she hopes to bring the spotlight to Aboriginal-owned businesses. “So many of the women who live, work and breathe native foods are overlooked in the native food space. That’s one of the reasons why I created this festival, to give women in remote areas a presence and platform in Sydney.”

Winsor is keen to stress that everyone is welcome to attend the Australian Native Food Festival. “Even though we’re an Aboriginal-owned and produced festival, it’s a festival for everyone,” she says. “Come and have some food. There’s music, there’s a great vibe and lots to see, do and learn.”

Australian Native Food Festival, September 26 & 27, Carriageworks, 245 Wilson St, Eveleigh, register here* to receive updates on festival programming. *