The NZ International Comedy Festival, Auckland Writers Festival and Te Marama Puoro o Aotearoa New Zealand Music Month are bringing a deluge of cultural events to Auckland this month. Want to see it all? Good luck cloning yourself.
Tāmaki Makaurau is the biggest city in New Zealand and its inhabitants have plenty to moan about. There have been years of gripes about restaurants closing early, coffee impossible to find after 3pm and our lack of 24-hour businesses, and peevish Redditors deploy gently critical descriptors like “boring” and “fucked”. Our hospitality industry patiently accommodates Aucklanders’ eating schedules (we’re allegedly the earliest diners in the world) and bemoans the midweek slump, when citizens turn their heat pump on for an hour and watch Celebrity Treasure Island at home. Many international events glide past the City of Sails entirely.
Now, there’s another problem bearing down on the city… “There’s too much on!” The lament echoes around galleries, markets and cafes where, huddled around oat milk lattes and matcha, Aucklanders frown at printed programmes. There are some decisions to be made.
May is a big one. The NZ International Comedy Festival, Auckland Writers Festival and Te Marama Puoro o Aotearoa New Zealand Music Month all take place during the same month, unleashing upon the city a deluge of literary panels, gigs, live readings, stand-up comedy and workshops. Everything’s happening all at once and time is finite. We have 744 hours in the month and with a majority of those probably spent at your job or sleeping, what’s left has to be divided carefully. (Don’t worry, for those outside of Auckland, the comedy fest and music month are bringing myriad events to Wellington, Christchurch and beyond too.)
There are so many professionally crack-up people performing in Auckland during the NZ Comedy Festival that the website feels like an infinity scroll, with more than 100 names on the schedule. Want to see them all? Good luck cloning yourself. Shows take place across over a dozen venues, from the historic Auckland Town Hall to The Hollywood Avondale and the North Shore’s Bruce Mason Centre. So stacked is the lineup that you may find yourself having to choose between seeing Tim Batt, Johanna Cosgrove and Annie Guo. Or torn between Angella Dravid, Tom Sainsbury and Richie Faavesi. Commit to the festival and you could see a different comic nearly every night of the week if you wanted to.
A lot of people go hard for the comedy festival, seeking that elusive luxury: a good laugh. Around 75,000 people across New Zealand attended last year. How many of those also went to the writers festival and celebrated music month? One can reasonably expect the Venn diagram to show considerable overlap.
The Auckland Writers Festival drew more than 85,000 attendees in 2025. This year’s “surging” ticket sales (which may quiet those who complain that no one reads books any more) mean that 2026 numbers could eclipse that figure. They’ve been lured by what Spinoff book editor Claire Mabey called a gasp-worthy programme; there are more than 220 writers involved, including Ian McEwan, RF Kuang, Patrick Radden Keefe, Charlotte Grimshaw, Witi Ihimaera, Tusiata Avia and even a former prime minister (Jacinda Ardern). But with more than 170 events taking place in the festival’s official window between May 12 and 17 – not including Streetside on May 8 – it’s physically impossible to see it all without defying the laws of time and space. Choose between medieval manuscripts, motherhood and meeting Canadian authors because they’re all on at once. Worried about both AI and failing? Sorry, you’ll have to decide between the two, with concurrent events taking place during the festival.
After comedy festival and writers festival tickets are arranged, Aucklanders’ carefully organised Google Calendars look more like games of Tetris. And that’s without factoring in New Zealand Music Month – that’s happening too! – which presents an impossible number of events during May. The Spinoff tried to count them all and gave up. There are more than 149 gigs happening in Auckland alone, in addition to the assorted events, workshops and summits also taking place during May. There’s also more than one place to look for it all. As well as music month’s own gig guide, you can find out what’s on at Our Auckland (Auckland Council’s events site), Discover Auckland (Tātaki Auckland Unlimited’s online platform) and Auckland Live (a business unit of Auckland Council), an experience that will turn your browser tabs into the Southern Motorway at rush hour.
Want to see Don McGlashan or Liz Stokes from The Beths live inside a shipping container? You’ll have to be patient and lucky. The mysterious purple Mighty box downtown at Te Komititanga Square allows only up to eight people inside at a time and the artist is a surprise (the lineup includes Leao, Jon Toogood, Geneva AM and more). If you’d rather not take your chances, then you’re welcome to choose between the dozens of local acts who are holding album and single release events in May – including Melodownz, The Sour, Diggy Dupé, Mim Jensen, Serebii and Foley to name but a handful. (And don’t complain that there’s no new music these days.)
For fledgling talent, a new Auckland Council programme, Sounds of Tāmaki Makaurau, focuses on the city’s emerging musicians, with 19 artists spread across eight events. And then there are the big shows. Anyone who doesn’t buy a ticket to see Marlon Williams at The Civic will be complaining about it later. Same goes for Fat Freddy’s Drop, who are playing at the Auckland Town Hall (their Civic show sold out already) and Split Enz at Spark Arena.
Many smaller music month events are entirely free. You can watch a performance of Indian classical music while the sun comes up. Or see kapa haka by Ngāti Whātua Ōrākei’s Te Whare Karioi every Saturday during May. Even the city’s libraries are turning up the volume – shushers beware – with live music at many locations around Auckland. Free events are also part of the writers festival, with a quarter of the festival schedule unticketed. It mitigates one common complaint: cost. Disposable income isn’t unlimited, and it plays a large role in influencing how many of May’s many activities people can reasonably attend. There are hurdles like work, childcare and household tasks to move aside, in order to carve out time to enjoy this glut of culture. How do you see it all and is one month enough?
May has been busy from the get-go, with Aotearoa Art Fair, the print-focused festival Printopia and the opening of Auckland Art Gallery’s new exhibition Forever Tomorrow: Chinese Art Now dividing the attention of the art-inclined populace of Auckland. They’ll likely overlap with patrons of the Design and Architecture Film Festival at the end of the month, many of whom will probably also be at the French Film Festival.
Wrapping up May is the Aotearoa Music Awards. My editor Veronica Schmidt asked if I could report on the event, as I did with the Taites. I’d love to, I told her, but there’s only problem… I’ll be seeing Fran Lebowitz at the writers festival and I can’t be in two places at once.
