Budget 2026: What’s in the budget for Australia’s arts and culture?

Artists, authors, musicians and other creatives have a huge impact on Australian culture, how Australians see themselves, and how the world sees Australians.  

But Australia’s arts and culture cannot be produced overseas, and cannot be moved offshore. It can only be made here. So, as venues, festivals and creative workers struggle across the sector, what has the government announced to make sure it still is? 

In short, not much. 

There’s only one budget measure aimed at the arts: $23 million over 3 years to repair the National Maritime Museum’s wharves, help the National Film and Sound Archive store old film stock, and get Old Parliament House ready for its 100th anniversary. 

Overall spending on arts and culture is expected to remain “broadly stable” over the forward estimates, but is that enough for a struggling sector? 

Before diving into the detail on the impact of this budget on the arts, it’s important to look at the context. The arts sector is in crisis, one far too big to solve without government intervention. 

What’s been happening with the arts? 

Employment in the arts and entertainment sector took almost five years to recover from the shock of COVID-19, three times as long as the rest of the Australian economy.  

Looking further back shows a sector with long-term struggles.  

Australia-wide employment has more than doubled in the last 40 years, whereas employment in arts and entertainment has increased by just less than half that. Arts and entertainment employment has been either stagnant or in decline since 2008-09, while other sectors of the Australian economy have expanded.  

The solution? According to recent moves from the federal government, philanthropy. Labor’s special envoy for the arts, Susan Templeman, has called philanthropy “critical” for the arts in Australia and is chairing a recently established inquiry into arts and cultural philanthropy. 

How important is philanthropy to the arts? While there’s no comprehensive figure, a total of $204 million ($238 when adjusted for inflation) was donated to organisations “advancing culture” in 2021, the latest year with data reported by the Australian Charities and Not-for-profits Commission.  

While $238 million in private philanthropy may sound like a lot of money, it pales in comparison to other funding sources for the arts – “critical” is an adjective much better applied to the role Australian Governments can play in keeping the arts sector afloat. 

In 2023-24 (the latest data), Australian state, territory, local and federal governments spent a combined $7 billion in recurrent funding for arts and culture – almost thirty times the size of philanthropy. 

In real terms, that $7 billion is the lowest point for public arts funding in most of a decade, since 2017-18.

Australian governments spent $551 million less in 2023-24 than they did in 2021-22 – that reduction alone is twice the size of philanthropy. 

The role of the federal government – which spends billions on arts and culture every year, is even more crucial in the context of recent cuts to arts funding at the state level. The NSW and Victorian governments, for example, have each been accused of cutting funding and programs to support the cultural sector. 

What will the 2026 budget do for the arts? 

Unsurprisingly for a government trying to put the burden of supporting arts and culture on private philanthropy, there is very little in this budget for the arts. 

Overall spending on arts and cultural heritage is expected to be just over $2.3 billion over the 2026-27 financial year, and to remain at roughly that level until the end of the decade. 

The sole arts-focused budget measure – $23 million for “National Collecting Institutions” –represents only a tiny fraction of total funding for the arts, let alone the $830 billion in spending across the budget as a whole. 

Some cultural institutions, such as the National Gallery, will have their funding slightly reduced in this budget. Others, including Creative Australia and Screen Australia, will have slightly more. 

But overall, the lack of any significant announcements is the main story for the arts in this budget.  

With stagnating employment levels, reduced funding and struggling workers, the arts sector has endured a lot over the past five years. COVID and the cost-of-living crisis have been a one-two punch it still has not recovered from. 

If artists, music festivals, museums, venues, companies, musicians and other creative workers were looking for a helping hand, they haven’t found one here.