Grammy and Multi-BRIT Award Winner Headlines the Festival’s Third South African Edition, Playing Cape Town on January 29 and Johannesburg on January 31
Joins the Previously Announced Line-Up Featuring Elaine, Zee Nxumalo, Chelsea Sloan and Jade T, With More Acts to Come Pre-Registration Now Open HERE. High-Res Imagery and Video HERE. Grammy and multi-BRIT Award-winning artist Olivia Dean will headline the third edition of Milk + Cookies Festival South Africa. Dean plays Sandringham Farm in Cape Town on 29 January and Nasrec Expo Centre in Johannesburg on 31 January, joining the previously announced line-up of Elaine, Zee Nxumalo, Chelsea Sloan and Jade T. Three years in, the festival is still keeping fans guessing.
Accepting the Grammy earlier this year, Dean spoke about her grandmother Carmen, who left Guyana for London at eighteen with the Windrush generation. “I’m a product of bravery,”she said. It’s a fitting note for a festival built on the same principle: that culture belongs to the people who make it and carry it somewhere new.
That’s how Milk + Cookies Festival is built in each city it runs in, with local artists on the bill and South African creators, venues and partners shaping the programme. Across [XX] days in Cape Town and Johannesburg, it brings music, food, fashion, art and design together through panels, workshops, pop-ups and parties alongside the festival stages. Additional acts and the full programme will be announced in the coming weeks.
Dean headlines a festival that effortlessly defies genre boundaries. Kaytranada opened the first South African edition in 2025 in front of 20,000 people, and Gunna followed in 2026. A producer, a rapper and a soul singer in three years is the pattern rather than the exception, and the crowd has followed it: a global, genre-agnostic audience that turns up for theexperience as much as the names on the poster. And now three years in, Milk + Cookies has become a fixture of the South African summer.Grammy and Multi-BRIT Award Winner Headlines the Festival’s Third South African Edition, Playing Cape Town on January 29 and Johannesburg on January 31
Joins the Previously Announced Line-Up Featuring Elaine, Zee Nxumalo, Chelsea Sloan and Jade T, With More Acts to Come Pre-Registration Now Open HERE. High-Res Imagery and Video HERE. Grammy and multi-BRIT Award-winning artist Olivia Dean will headline the third edition of Milk + Cookies Festival South Africa. Dean plays Sandringham Farm in Cape Town on 29 January and Nasrec Expo Centre in Johannesburg on 31 January, joining the previously announced line-up of Elaine, Zee Nxumalo, Chelsea Sloan and Jade T. Three years in, the festival is still keeping fans guessing.
Accepting the Grammy earlier this year, Dean spoke about her grandmother Carmen, who left Guyana for London at eighteen with the Windrush generation. “I’m a product of bravery,”she said. It’s a fitting note for a festival built on the same principle: that culture belongs to the people who make it and carry it somewhere new.
That’s how Milk + Cookies Festival is built in each city it runs in, with local artists on the bill and South African creators, venues and partners shaping the programme. Across [XX] days in Cape Town and Johannesburg, it brings music, food, fashion, art and design together through panels, workshops, pop-ups and parties alongside the festival stages. Additional acts and the full programme will be announced in the coming weeks.
Dean headlines a festival that effortlessly defies genre boundaries. Kaytranada opened the first South African edition in 2025 in front of 20,000 people, and Gunna followed in 2026. A producer, a rapper and a soul singer in three years is the pattern rather than the exception, and the crowd has followed it: a global, genre-agnostic audience that turns up for the experience as much as the names on the poster. And now three years in, Milk + Cookies has become a fixture of the South African summer.
“People keep asking how Kaytranada, Gunna and Olivia Dean end up on the same bill, ” said Chase Freeman, Head of Marketing at Milk + Cookies. “Never the same sound, always the same feeling. That’s the only brief we’ve ever had. We book for the people in the room, not for a genre, and they come for what the room feels like as much as the name on the poster.
Three years in, that’s what South Africa has given us. We came here to put on a show and ended up building something with the people who live here, and it’s changed how we do this everywhere else.”
TICKETS
Pre-registration: open now at tickets.
This event is open to ages 18+ only. About Milk + Cookies Milk + Cookies is a global music and culture platform, founded in Atlanta by four friends and built on the belief that the people making the culture should own the platform it runs on.
Through its festivals, concerts and multi-day Music Week programming, Milk + Cookies brings music, fashion, food, art and design into the same space, working with the artists, creators and venues of every city it enters. Launched in South Africa in January 2025 with a 20,000-person debut headlined by Kaytranada, it has since grown to more than 30,000 attendees across Cape Town and Johannesburg, and returns for its third edition in January 2027.