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Kylie Minogue returned to her home city today to headline the Telstra Pre-Game Entertainment at the 2026 Toyota AFL Grand Final. Kylie performed a 20-minute spectacular set to over 100,000 fans at the Melbourne Cricket Ground – in what was one of the largest entertainment productions ever staged at an Australian sporting event.
The Grand Final is the championship decider of Australian Rules football and one of the biggest dates on the country’s sporting calendar. Kylie’s set was created specifically for the occasion, with all new arrangements, choreography and staging.
Kylie was joined by three Australian special guests during the set. G Flip added an electric guitar spin to Padam Padam, William Barton brought his own melodic interpretation to Confide In Me, and Dom Dolla amped up Can’t Get You Out Of My Head with a new club mix especially for the 2026 event.
Every look Kylie wore was custom created by Dolce&Gabbana – continuing a relationship between the designers and the global icon that has spanned three decades.
“With Dolce & Gabbana we paid homage to some of the iconic looks we have created together over the years and gave them an MCG Grand Final twist,” said Kylie.
The performance opened with an ode to Melbourne football history. In the pre-show video content Kylie recited the lyrics to ‘One Day in September’, Mike Brady’s much-loved Grand Final anthem, with its melody woven into Light Up, the song from Kylie’s recent Netflix documentary.
“I always knew I wanted to reference Mike Brady’s footy anthem in some way,” said Kylie. “For this occasion we decided I would recite the lyrics and have the melody refrain mixed into Light Up. I wanted the footy crowd to feel the nostalgia of that iconic song in an unexpected way.”
The show was built with collaborators who have helped shaped Kylie’s live work for more than three decades including musical director Steve Anderson and choreographer Ashley Wallen, who first worked with Kylie in 1998 as a dancer on her Intimate and Live tour, aged 17.
Kylie’s forty stage dancers were joined by sixteen dancers from Sydney Dance Company, led by Artistic Director Rafael Bonachela. The performance reunited Kylie and Bonachela, whose creative partnership dates back to her iconic Can’t Get Blue Monday Out of My Head performance at the 2002 BRIT Awards and the Love at First Sight video.
For the Loco-Motion, Kylie was joined by 100 young dancers cast from local Melbourne dance and performance schools. A current Camberwell High School student was cast as Young Kylie – Kylie herself attended the same school as a teenager.
Australian comedy duo The Inspired Unemployed, whose satirical videos have made them one of the country’s biggest online comedy acts, made a surprise cameo appearance during the Loco-Motion.
Behind the scenes, bringing the performance to life was a major feat, with a crew of around 300 people working across the staging and technical elements. The performance was the result of a collaboration between the AFL, Kylie’s team and the Mushroom Group, working together to deliver the history-making show.
Kylie mania swept across Melbourne in the days leading up to the game. A huge, 13 storey high mural of Kylie went up beside Flinders Street Station, a mirrored, chrome ST. ALi x Kylie coffee truck spun around the city from Wednesday, serving free limited edition coffees developed and named by Kylie herself, and at the Grand Final Footy Fest, the TEAM KYLIE merchandise shop had queues out of the door every day.
Kylie was joined by Dom Dolla, G Flip and William Barton with a cast of over 100 dancers and looks by Dolce & Gabbana
In Kylie’s words: “Footy I’m Home!”
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