Wollongong's cycling festival has grown from a single weekend in 2024 to a 16-day, 25-event program this year, as the city continues to draw on infrastructure and status built for the 2022 UCI Road World Championships.
The 'Ride Wollongong Festival of Cycling' runs from 29 August to 13 September 2026. It was recently unveiled by Lord Mayor Tania Brown, alongside Destination Wollongong general manager Jeremy Wilshire.
"It's grown over the four-year period,” Wilshire said. “It's been a matter of stakeholder engagement, acceptance from the community, and then coming up with a model that's sustainable.'
The 2022 UCI Road World Championships were held over eight days and drew more than 240,000 spectators and 670 riders from 65 countries.
The event made Wollongong the first city in the southern hemisphere to be awarded UCI Bike City status, a designation tied to an $80 million investment in cycling infrastructure, including the Cringila Hills Mountain Bike Park, a criterium track at Unanderra, more than 50km of mountain bike trails at Mount Kembla, and a council target of 200km of shared cycling paths.
This year's program includes the Blue Line Community Ride, a non-competitive ride along the 2022 road race course, the Brennan Illawarra Tour, a round of the NSW/ACT Road Series that draws competitive riders from outside the region, and Ride4Rotary - a family event at Lang Park and the Wollongong foreshore.
The program also includes an All Abilities Day and school mountain-biking sessions through the Kembla trail network.
Organisers say the festival's structure of a large number of smaller events spread across existing venues is designed to limit disruption to the city.
"Having a model like this where you've got a lot of bite-sized events that are accessible to enter, but also cause minimal disruption to the city, is really important for acceptance," he said.
The festival will have one weekend of significant road closures around Lang Park and the Flagstaff Hill precinct on its final day of events - full details can be seen on the event website.