Kylie Minogue delivered on her promise of “the biggest spectacle” at the Melbourne Cricket Ground on Saturday (Sept. 26), headlining the AFL Grand Final pre-game entertainment with a career-spanning, high-flying show in front of more than 100,000 fans — and millions more watching at home.
Performing in her hometown for the first time at the event, the pop icon packed more than three decades of hits into a 20-minute set, undeterred by the rain that had soaked the venue for much of the day. “A homecoming like this? I should be so lucky,” she told the crowd, as the letters “K” and “M” lit the stadium’s floodlights.
The show opened with a video montage of home footage from Minogue’s Melbourne childhood, a young schoolgirl walking onto the turf before the real Kylie launched into “Love at First Sight.”
From there she moved through “Love at First Sight,” “In Your Eyes,” “Get Outta My Way,” “On a Night Like This,” “All the Lovers” and “Spinning Around,” backed by dancers and pyrotechnics through multiple costume changes.
The set made room for guests and surprises: Kalkadunga songman William Barton joined her for a dramatic, orchestral-backed rendition of 1994’s “Confide in Me,” and G Flip — who had opened the pre-game entertainment with their own three-instrument set — returned to trade a rock-leaning “Padam Padam.”
After a fake-out ending on “The Loco-Motion,” which sent the crowd into the dance en masse, Minogue emerged from a giant bedazzled “KYLIE” football and soared through the air above the stadium to close on “Can’t Get You Out of My Head,” incorporating a remix by Melbourne DJ Dom Dolla, who appeared as her “aircraft marshaller.”
Minogue is the first solo Australian act to headline the Grand Final since Paul Kelly in 2019, and the first Australian at all since a 2021 medley during the pandemic-relocated Perth final; recent years had featured international headliners including Robbie Williams, KISS, Katy Perry and Snoop Dogg.
One of the most successful pop artists in history, Minogue has sold more than 80 million records worldwide and scored nine No. 1 albums in Australia across a nearly four-decade career. While her U.S. presence peaked with the crossover smash “Can’t Get You Out of My Head” — which reached No. 7 on the Billboard Hot 100 — she has been a fixture on Billboard’s dance charts, where the same track became the first of her 14 No. 1s on the Dance Club Songs tally. A two-time Grammy winner and 18-time ARIA Award recipient, she returned to the global spotlight in recent years with “Padam Padam” and her Grammy-winning album Tension, and toured Australia in 2026 on her Tension Tour.
