The NSW government today spruiked that Casino’s CBD will host one of Australia’s great transport events after Casino Truck Show secured funding under the state government’s 2026/27 Regional Event Fund.
It is one of six events named in this year’s round, funded through Destination NSW with grants of up to $50,000 each going toward marketing, PR, infrastructure and equipment hire.
Regional visitor numbers climbing
In the media release, the NSW government cites its own Tourism Research Australia data, which claims regional NSW remains the country’s top regional visitor destination, ahead of regional Victoria and Queensland.
They say in the year to March 2026, more than 64 million international and domestic visitors came to regional NSW and spent more than $27 billion in local communities. Regional NSW led the nation on both total visits and total nights stayed, part of the state government’s push toward $44 billion in regional expenditure by 2035.
A different picture for major festivals
While growth in small-scale regional events have occurred in part owing to government (tax payer) assistance, many of the state’s biggest festivals have disappeared owing in part to government intervention.
Splendour in the Grass has not run since 2023, and cancelled again for 2025, with no confirmed return date. Bluesfest, after a strong 2025 event drawing 109,000 people to Byron Bay, was cancelled for 2026, with a liquidator now appointed to the festival’s affairs.
Covid-19 border closures and capacity limits forced both festivals to cancel outright in 2020 and 2021. According to Bluesfest’s official statement, organisers cited ‘rising production, logistics, insurance and touring costs, combined with softer ticket demand and international uncertainties’.
Billboard reported the collapse as part of a wider-run of Australian festivals that have skipped a year or disappeared entirely, including Rolling Loud Australia, Esoteric Festival, Caloundra Music Festival and Listen Out, attributing the trend to cost-of-living pressures, rising insurance and operating costs, and changing ticket-buying habits.
Patron drug deaths
Apart from Covid-19, NSW government and police policy has also negatively impacted events. Six young people died during or after NSW music festivals between December 2017 and January 2019. All had taken MDMA or ecstasy; five of the six also had other drugs in their system, according to the Coroners Court of NSW findings.
Deputy State Coroner Harriet Grahame handed down findings in November 2019 recommending pill testing, an end to sniffer dogs at festivals, and strip searches restricted to extreme circumstances, calling the evidence for drug checking ‘compelling’, according to The Conversation. Grahame found sniffer dogs directly contributed to the risk of death by driving patrons to preload, double-dose, or panic-swallow their drugs when confronted by a dog, rather than deterring use. At least three of the six deaths have been linked by researchers to panic consumption triggered by drug-dog encounters, according to research cited by Connections.
Pill testing
The government’s response was not swift. The coroner’s findings came down in November 2019; NSW did not run its first pill-testing trial until early 2025, and initially rejected the sniffer-dog recommendation outright, only revisiting the issue via the December 2024 NSW Drug Summit – five years after the coroner said the evidence was compelling.
The government finally ran a 12-month drug-checking trial from early 2025 to February 2026 at 12 festivals – Field Day, Lost Paradise, HTID, Laneway and others – following that Drug Summit’s priority recommendation, according to NSW Health’s drug checking trial program page and NSW Health’s own festival-by-festival announcements (Field Day, Laneway).
That trial is now under independent evaluation, and NSW Health’s program page does not give a confirmed completion date or timeframe for when findings will be released, according to the same NSW Health drug checking trial page.
As for other states and territories, the ACT was first, running CanTest since July 2022, extended to at least June 2027. Victoria began mobile testing at festivals in December 2024 and opened a fixed site in Fitzroy in August 2025, running as an implementation trial until June 2026. Queensland went the other way — in September 2025 it became the first state to effectively ban pill testing, after the LNP government didn’t renew funding for CheQpoint’s services, which had already closed its Brisbane and Gold Coast sites in April 2025. (Source: Alcohol and Drug Foundation — Pill testing in Australia, Victoria Health — pill testing.)
Sniffer dogs
Sniffer dogs are still deployed throughout festival grounds, yet according to SBS News, NSW Police have agreed to stay away from the pill-testing/medical precinct specifically, but not elsewhere on festival grounds. Notably, the NSW government rejected the Drug Summit’s own recommendation to suspend drug-detection dogs and strip searches for suspected possession during the trial period, according to Redfern Legal Centre — so the health-harm-reduction arm (testing) and the enforcement arm (dogs, searches) are running in direct tension, on the government’s own advisory body’s advice.
Unlawful strip search litigation
According to the Supreme Court of NSW’s class action register and The Conversation, Slater and Gordon’s class action covers festival strip searches from July 2016 to July 2022, with more than 3,000 people registered. The lead plaintiff, Raya Meredith, was strip-searched at Splendour in the Grass in 2018 after a drug dog merely sniffed in her direction then moved on – no further indication given.
On 30 September 2025, Justice Dina Yehia in the NSW Supreme Court found the search unlawful, ruled police had conducted searches ‘on an industrial level’ with ‘flagrant disregard’ for legal safeguards, and awarded Meredith $93,000 – the largest judgment of its kind against an Australian police force, according to The Conversation and the Law Society Journal.
Redfern Legal Centre separately found more than 100 children were strip-searched by NSW Police over a two-year period, in some cases without a parent or guardian present, a legal requirement for minors, according to Redfern Legal Centre’s media release. The NSW government has since signalled it will appeal, which is holding up settlement for the other 3,000+ registered claimants, according to Lawyers Weekly.
Fund has a long history
Meanwhile, the government say its Regional Event Fund has backed regional communities since 1996, with more than $17 million invested across more than 650 events. Past recipients include the Deni Ute Muster and the Parkes Elvis Festival, both now grown from local events into national drawcards.
Other successful events this round
Other events sharing in this year’s government funding include the Seven Valleys Wild Food Festival in Lithgow, Barragga Yangga – a First Nations language, story and song celebration on the South Coast – the Tarago Medieval Faire, Newcastle Food Month and the Woolgoolga Curryfest, now in its twentieth year.
The full list of 2026/27 recipients is available at destinationnsw.com.au/regional-event-fund-2026-27.
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